1. casestudyKempinskiHotelMalloftheEmirates
Atyour
serviceUpholding Dubai’s five-star standards
is no easy task. Prasanna Rupasinghe,
Director of IT, Kempinski Hotel Mall of
the Emirates, launched a seamless
guest-facing application powered by
contemporary IT infrastructure that could
deliver first-class HDTV and hotel services.
W
ith over 300,000
guests from around
the world visiting
annually, five-star
Kempinski Hotel Mall
of the Emirates has a duty to provide
a first-class stay for its guests. This
includes everything: food, room
quality and service, and, now more
than ever, technology services.
Kempinski MoE’s Director of IT
Prasanna Rupasinghe appreciates
that being based in Dubai – a world
leader in terms of hospitality and
service – brings added pressure
and expectation to the business.
“Most hotels around the world can’t
compete with what Dubai can offer,”
he says. “Even the best that the U.S.
and Europe can offer is often not up
to our standard.”
The average guest at Kempinski
MoE brings four or more devices for
their stay, meaning roughly a million
pass through the hotel every year.
In addition, the hotel’s 500 staff
members bring additional strain to
the network.
In the latter stages of 2014,
Rupasinghe decided that the best way
to bring all the hotel’s services and
facilities to guests through technology
would be through an upgraded
infrastructure, that could power a
cutting-edge mobile application. The
Interactive Customer Experience
(ICE) app would be integrated with
the hotel’s digital TV platform,
automated guest servicing platform
and room management system.
This would enable guests to stream
TV content, access high-quality
wireless Internet and deliver service
requests through any mobile device.
“We wanted to combine content
delivery, virtual systems and gaming
applications into a single platform,”
he says. “It would have to be a link
between the guest and the hotel.”
Rupasinghe, like many other
ambitious IT decision-makers
working in the hospitality industry,
faces a balancing act when it comes
to satisfying the needs of guests
“We had one
application for
each business
process, and
some of our
processes
were still
completely
manual. This
situation
crippled our
ability to
grow.”
of all ages. This would need to be
taken into account when designing a
user-friendly application. “I’m sure
the typical outsider may think our
job is a question of implementing
the most advanced technology
products, but it’s not always that
simple,” he says. “We need to
cater for the older generation,
who are used to light switches
and communicating with a human
being, as opposed to a machine. By
the same token, we need to satisfy
millennials, who may want to
avoid staff altogether and carry out
bookings through a device.”
The process of designing the
infrastructure that could support
this application was one that had
to be delivered with longevity
and precision in mind. Although
Kempinski MoE already had a robust
IT infrastructure, the ICE app – and
a vast amount of HDTV content in
particular – would place all-new
demands on the hotel’s network
and IT resources. With this in mind,
Rupasinghe drew up a comprehensive
roadmap. “We built our new capacity
with the potential to grow for the
next four to five years,” he says. “It
was important to accommodate new
bandwidth needs, and remove the
network’s complexity.”
One of the key initiatives was
to refresh the hotel’s fixed LAN
network infrastructure that consisted
of core, distribution, access and
server farm layers to high-density
virtualised infrastructure. This would
need to have minimal complexity,
and have scalable technology that
could prepare Kempinski MoE for
applications such as full and ultra
HD video, 10GE, and fully secure and
simplified operating software that
could meet PCI requirements.
Opting for a range of powerful
technologies as part of his new
solution, Rupasinghe’s aim was to
deliver ‘bandwidth on-demand’ to
the hotel guests. This encompassed
a high-speed Internet offering from
Rivernet, Avaya’s Fabric Connect
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