Positioning your hospitality cloud to deliver the next-generation hotel guest experience

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1 Positioning your hospitality cloud to deliver the next-generation hotel guest experience Hotel guests are increasingly expecting the same types of smart, mobile, and connected communications services that they use in their workplace and at home. By leveraging the power of the cloud, hoteliers can integrate their existing voice services with their hospitality applications and workflows to cost-effectively deploy innovative new applications that will revolutionize the way they manage operations and staff. Most importantly, these new applications give hoteliers the opportunity to transform the guest services they offer today into an exceptional and differentiating guest experience. The key? Freedom to choose a cloud migration strategy that is tuned to their property needs, existing infrastructures, investment timeframes, and total cost of ownership objectives. By Jim Davies, Vice President, Vertical Initiatives, Mitel Traveling from the US, Peter lands at Heathrow airport and makes his way by taxi to his preferred hotel. En route, his hotel loyalty app assigns him a local UK phone number, which he can use throughout his stay to place unlimited calls back to the US from his mobile device. As Mary checks into the hotel for a business conference, her mobile device connects to her community of colleagues from her company who are attending the same conference. The community app tells her who has already checked in, and lets her know that some of the team is now meeting at the hotel restaurant. After checking into her room, she heads to the restaurant. As she approaches the restaurant doors, a message pops up on her mobile telling her that the group has moved on, with directions to the new location. John calls room service and places his dinner order. After hanging up, he changes his mind and dials room service to revise his order. The hotel phone system, with its priority call-back capability, connects John with the staff member who originally took the order. These scenarios are just a few examples of the types of highly integrated, mobile, and personalized guest services that are in the sights of hotel CIOs around the world.

2 Hoteliers know that innovative IT technology services and smart communications applications can help them shape an exceptional guest experience that differentiates them from their competitors. From new ways to deliver traditional services such as wake-up calls, room service, auto check-in, and conference services to wholly new kinds of applications, communications technologies can be key to delighting their guests and keep them coming back. Loyal customers, in turn, drive occupancy rates higher and ultimately generate greater revenue. Hoteliers understand this equation, and know that smart applications that wouldn t be viable on a per-property basis are easy to deploy from the cloud. This is why the CIOs at the majority of hotels have move to the cloud as their IT mantra. They already know that cloud-based technology is key to deploying new applications rapidly and scaling cost-effectively. For some time now, hoteliers have been centralizing key applications in the cloud including their critical property management systems (PMSs) and call accounting software in order to: simplify the complexity of their IT infrastructures; reduce the number of on-site hardware components, as well as the cost of associated installation, management, and maintenance; take advantage of scale by easily configuring applications across all of their hotel properties; and rapidly deploy upgrades and new features. Now, hoteliers are looking to realize these same benefits for their communications applications and are making plans to migrate the voice application portion of their infrastructure to the cloud. The appeal of moving the voice infrastructure off the hotel property and into the cloud is strong. Voice today is a utility for hotels: it is a must-have, but it is no longer the money-maker it once was. Very few guests use the in-room phone for long-distance calls. By eliminating their voice equipment, essentially the PBX gear, installed at each of a hotel s individual properties, hotels can significantly reduce the complexity of their voice infrastructures. The expectation is that moving voice to the cloud has the potential to simplify on-property support and lower total cost of ownership (TCO). The voice challenge For hotels that have made the decision to deploy all-ip technology rooms, moving all of their voice straight to the cloud is a simple choice. The majority of hotels, however, have analog phones, not IP or digital phones, in the room, which introduces unique challenges for cloud implementations. Analog phones are still prevalent for several reasons. For one, many established hotels don t have the structured cabling necessary to support IP telephones. Another key reason is that hotels must have room phones to meet 911/emergency call requirements, and analog phones are still the least expensive option that survives in a power outage. Moreover, analog phones can be installed by anyone, with no need for trained technicians, and they are easy and cost-effective to replace. There is real merit in thinking about what is the right way to deliver voice to the guest room and we are looking at a number of next-generation hotel room concepts in our development labs. But for the foreseeable future, we can expect there will still be a significant number of analog phones in hotels around the world.

3 The underlying challenge for hotels with existing analog infrastructure is that analog room phones must be connected to extra hardware on site, in the form of analog gateways or Analog Terminal Adapters (ATAs). This equipment is typically housed in the on-premises PBX or analog gateways that convert analog signals to IP. For these hotels, a move to the cloud would still require almost as much hardware on site as there is today with a PBX. The result is that the aggressive TCO targets established for voice in hotels are not being met, leaving many hoteliers mulling over two options: Keep their on-site PBX infrastructure and TCO as is, and wait until their next investment cycle to move to the cloud; or Rip and replace their existing gear, make the move to IP phones, and move voice to the cloud now. The overall TCO may be higher, but their hotel infrastructure would be positioned for the future. While both of these approaches have merit, hoteliers should consider a third direction a hybrid cloud which would allow them to leverage the power of the cloud now, reuse existing assets, and transition their voice infrastructure over time at their pace, on their investment schedule. By applying a two-fold investment decision-making strategy, and choosing a cloud approach all cloud or hybrid cloud that is designed for their business needs, hoteliers can leverage the power of cloud technology, rapidly deploy the next generation of hospitality services and applications, at a price point that makes business sense. Flexible hybrid cloud architecture The key to understanding the hybrid cloud approach is recognizing that there are two key but very different architectural elements that deliver the power of the cloud for hotels: Voice Application Service (VAS) for simplification and TCO improvement. The VAS is a utility service that is critical to running the hotel, but it s not going to differentially fill rooms. Moving this component to the cloud reduces complexity on property by having management, upgrades, and control all performed remotely to drive down the cost to deploy and manage the VAS. For traditional voice, hoteliers should be absolutely focused on aggressively lowering their TCO. Hospitality Application Suite (HAS), for new voice-based value applications. The HAS solutions are differentiated applications aimed at driving exceptional guest experiences, increasing occupancy rates, and growing revenue. The priority here is to invest in value creation. Looking deeper into the HAS and VAS elements can show some strategies to effectively leverage the power of cloud in hospitality.

4 Hospitality Application Suite (HAS) Voice as an ingredient can drive value into many hospitality workflows from guest check-in to staff collaborations. A cloud-based HAS provides a powerful framework to deliver that value. To illustrate the power of the HAS, consider a hotel that wants to install a new productivity application for its housekeeping staff. The number of housekeeping staff at each of the hotel s properties is low just 8 staff each. Today, the cost of deploying that app at each site including hardware installation and maintenance is likely hard to justify for just 8 staff members. However, with the HAS, the hotel can consider centralizing the app software in the cloud, and quickly deploy the new app across all of its 2,000 properties, making 16,000 staff members more productive and easily justifying the cost. That same benefit extends to trialing and upgrading: before deploying an app globally, the hotel may want to trial it at one or two of its properties and roll it out across the board if it proves successful. It is also critical that the HAS be heterogeneous. The ability to interwork with multiple vendors PBX equipment gives hotels the added flexibility of ensuring that hospitality applications and features can easily and reliably be deployed across all of their properties globally, regardless of the type of existing infrastructure. For these reasons, the HAS belongs in the cloud. Voice Application Service (VAS) Move to the cloud at a rate that makes sense for you. The second element of this hybrid architecture is the Voice Application Service, or VAS traditionally the PBX. The VAS is the key to migration flexibility. It can be placed in the cloud for a full-cloud scenario, which makes sense with an IP room, or it can be installed on the hotel premises as a traditional PBX. There is a third option hybrid VAS in which management, upgrade, and control of the VAS is driven from the cloud, but the software subscriptions run on the analog gateway on property. If the existing site gateway hardware can be reused, significant TCO improvement results. The location of the VAS can also be moved in keeping with the hotel s transition to the cloud. The VAS can begin on premises, then the same VAS can move to the cloud. A hybrid cloud approach of combining a hybrid-based VAS with a cloud-based HAS results in solutions that deliver the power of the cloud at TCO levels that hoteliers need, with the flexibility to migrate forward at a rate that makes sense for their business.

5 Hospitality cloud solutions are not one-size-fits-all The exciting thing about the cloud, and even more exciting for those of us designing solutions for the hospitality industry, is that fundamentally a cloud migration is a highly configurable and flexible proposition. Hospitality cloud solutions do not need to be a one-size-fits-all technology. Rather, they should allow for tailoring of solutions that help hotels migrate to the cloud, without compromising the power of the cloud. A cloud approach tuned to your needs. Indeed, the question shouldn t be what do I have to rip out in order to move to the cloud? Rather, the question hoteliers need to ask is: What path to the cloud should I choose that allows me to reuse existing assets. Freedom of choice in deployment models to allow hoteliers to create a cloud-based solution that fits their needs, combined with a suite of innovative hospitality communications applications, is key to ensuring simple, cost-effective implementations that can leverage the power of the cloud. mitel.com Copyright 2015, Mitel Networks Corporation. All Rights Reserved. The Mitel word and logo are trademarks of Mitel Networks Corporation. Any reference to third party trademarks are for reference only and Mitel makes no representation of ownership of these marks.