CMS puts the IT in Elite Hotels

Elite Hotels is dedicated to providing customers with the opportunity to stay at some of the UK's most outstanding country house hotels, carefully restored to their original splendour. When it comes to their business IT, however, it's a different story. The company has a thoroughly up-to-date IT infrastructure developed and supported by CMS Group, giving instant access to property performance information and trends.

Elite Hotels is an independent, UK-based hotel group with a portfolio of hotels in the south east of England, offering a peaceful haven for individuals and businesses away from the pressures of everyday life. Its hotels include Ashdown Park Hotel and Country Club near Wych Cross in East Sussex; The Grand Hotel at Eastbourne, also in East Sussex; Tylney Hall Hotel near Hook in Hampshire and the recently opened Luton Hoo Hotel, Golf & Spa in Bedfordshire.

The majority of Elite Hotels business comes from the corporate/conference sector although a sizeable part is leisure and wedding / special occasion celebrations. It was Elite Hotels' decision to deploy the Fidelio property management system early in 2005 that prompted it to upgrade its IT infrastructure.

Simon Willis, Operations Manager, Elite Hotels, explains, "We recognised that we needed to improve our IT and its support if we were going to be able to use Fidelio. Until this point we had effectively operated as 'islands' of IT with a local manager providing IT support. Fidelio recommended CMS Group because of their experience of hotel IT support and knowledge of hotel software packages." The brief to CMS was to put in place an IT infrastructure that would give Elite Hotels central access to information and ensure round-the-clock operation. In addition a flexible and proactive approach was paramount. CMS proposed, and rolled-out, a Citrix thin-client network for each hotel linked, via a WAN, to central servers. Although most of the network uses thin-client terminals, some PCs have been retained for service flexibility enabling companies who wish to run presentations from a USB memory stick, for example. It has also deployed a wireless network covering meeting rooms and bedrooms. CMS has overlaid the WAN with a full suite of hotel and business software including Fidelio PMS and Windows 2003 server environment along with Exchange 2003 for email, approximately 200 users, KRONOS time and attendance software, and interfaces to HP Server hardware and HP printers.

Although all the hotels are linked within a single network, Elite chose not to have an intranet instead it uses shared public drives. Remote access is made available through a Virtual Private Network (VPN) including web mail. "The thin-client network has revolutionised the way we do business. For the first time we are able to access group reporting for finance, sales and marketing. It allows us to spot trends earlier that we are able to quantify and thus act on. The network is fast and people can work at different sites yet easily access their e-mail and any information they need," says Simon Willis.

Having established the IT infrastructure, CMS now provides Elite Hotels with a fully managed, IT support service. This operates at two levels: day-to-day telephone and on-site support and on-going advice on IT strategy. Elite hotels employees have a single point of contact for all hardware and software support. CMS engineers act as a filter to assess and identify the cause of the problem. If it is hardware CMS sorts out the problem directly. If it is software related CMS forwards the problem to the appropriate software supplier and then logs and manages the support call, ensuring software problems are dealt with promptly.

Simon Willis and his colleagues have welcomed the professionalism and responsiveness of the support from CMS. "We have been delighted by the way in which CMS has supported our IT. They provide 24 hour support and are able to quickly have engineers on-site should the need arise. Moreover, we now review our IT infrastructure regularly with CMS to ensure any new software and hardware we plan to use will run smoothly before we deploy it."

Looking ahead, Simon Willis sees further challenges in the way in which Elite Hotels deploys Broadband and TV. "Victorian buildings don't readily lend themselves to installing lots of cabling so we may have to consider wireless technologies. In any event we will have the expertise of CMS to draw on so that whichever route we eventually take we can be sure it will work first time."

CMS Group supports

Citrix environment using Wyse 1200LE and S10 terminals, Windows 2003 server

environment along with Exchange 2003 for email, approximately 200 users across 4 sites; KRONOS time and attendance software, usual interfaces such as Fidelio, interfaces to HP Server hardware and HP printers.