Grange Hotels

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Britannic Technologies working with Grange Hotels to unify their Communications

Grange Hotels have a portfolio of sixteen 4 and 5 star luxury hotels in London. They are the premier independent hotel chain in the city and combine excellent service with quality, comfort, high quality business services and conference facilities.

The latest addition to the Grange portfolio is the recently constructed Grange Tower Bridge Hotel, a brand new 4 star superior hotel located in Prescot Street.

Following a successful ICT implementation at the Grange St Paul's Hotel, Britannic Technologies was chosen as the preferred supplier to deliver and project manage the installation of the ICT infrastructure at the new project.

Requirements

Britannic has worked with clients in the hospitality sector for almost a decade and understands the complex and unique requirements of the industry. The need to support the guest is vital, but this is in addition to the day to day demands placed upon ICT in any business environment.

Voice is crucially important in a hospitality environment. At Grange their business demands that the network is agile enough to cope with 2 extensions per room and the system needs to be changed daily to support new requests and new billing.  Integration with the property management platform is vital. In order to deliver best of breed business services the solution would need to be robust enough to support heavy demands on the network during Conferences and be able to meet audio and video conferencing requirements and integration of third party video solutions.

Highlights

• Resilient LAN and HP network and wifi across entire  building - key to providing 24/7 continuous operation of the hotel.
• Full integration of a wide range of services across the hotel including IP TV, voice, property management services and guest services.
• Mitel handsets give Grange a standardised guest experience across the hotel whilst ensuring consistency in the supply and ease of support and reduced business risk.
• Professional services - Britannic worked with the builders to support a phased 'go live', involving a part-opening of the hotel. This means Britannic engineers can work within the hospitality environment without impacting on guests.
• Britannic's dedicated hospitality team -  engineers, project management, sales and rapid escalation points to Board level ensures attention to detail and a high level of satisfaction.
• 24/7 support for the entire network and a single point of contact ensures rapid resolution of issues.
• Support for back office and front desk staff is an assurance for Grange Hotels that their staff will be able to function efficiently.
• Britannic has worked in conjunction with other Grange suppliers project managing the installation effectively to ensure a coordinated approach.
• Britannic were engaged by Grange to develop bespoke integration with the PMS solution and multiple phone systems.
• Hospitality first for the integration of the Samsung Smartv into an IP TV installation.

Solution
Britannic has installed the ICT infrastructure at Grange Tower based on an HP network.  This is tried and tested infrastructure which will ensure the availability of key hotel services including voice, IP TV, guest services and core software applications.  The network design is resilient and meshed to ensure a high level of availability, crucial in a hospitality environment where the customer is king and availability of service is crucial to reputation.

The wireless network is provided by the HP Networking wireless solution.  This has been configured to provide hotel and guest Wi-Fi access across the building along with provision for third party SIP handsets. Britannic has also delivered the LAN running IP TV and property management services.  The LAN contains dual fibres offering a high level of resilience.

Tailor-made comprehensive support agreements with strict SLAs contribute towards 24/7 availability.  Specific escalation paths up to Board level have been put in place to ensure rapid response and resolution.

A separate Mitel 3300 and ISDN line is provided for the conference facility.  LAN and voice are set up to work either together or separately from rest of hotel, therefore conference needs can be accommodated without affecting the rest of the hotel.

The deployment methodology used at St Paul's was applied to the Grange Tower hotel, ensuring that a phased opening was possible.

This is a very complex procedure requiring frequent adds, moves and changes to keep the business operating as different parts of the hotel are opened. The ICT infrastructure was just one component of the whole project. Prince 2 project management control underpinned the installation and deployment and ensured that the project was installed on time and in budget.

The telephony solution installed is a Mitel communications system, which has been configured to support two devices per room. Two Mitel 3300 controllers have been specified in the design, with the main hotel 3300 having dual power and RAID redundancy within the controller, which will support the main hotel and guest rooms.  Linked by fiber the second controller is installed in the AV control room in the Conference Area and to support conference functions, providing resilience and failover. This supplies flexible on demand channel services for ISDN2, ISDN30 and dedicated analogue lines to all parts of the conference and public areas through multiple access points.

"As our solution providers and engineers for a fully converged IP and SIP future-proof solution at Grange St Pauls, Britannic Technologies provided excellent design, installation, service and support. It provides the ideal platform for Britannic to apply the economies of convergence to both future developments and parts of the existing group."
Steve Waldron, Financial Director, Grange Hotels