Customer Success Story
Leading Hotels of the World Selects BT Infonet for Global Communications
The Leading Hotels of the World, Ltd. (LHW) is the prestigious sales, marketing and reservation organisation that represents 315 of the world's finest luxury hotels. Established in 1928 by a group of influential European hoteliers, LHW was initially known as The Luxury Hotels of Europe and Egypt and represented 38 deluxe hotels including The Savoy in London, the Domaine du Royal Club Evian - Hotel Royal in Evian, France, The Mena House Oberoi Hotel & Casino in Cairo and the King David Hotel in Jerusalem.
Hotels seeking to join LHW apply for admission. To be considered, the hotel must be a deluxe or luxury hotel and must meet the most exacting standards with respect to accommodation, service, management, cuisine, facilities - and all aspects of guest comfort. From among the applications submitted, a limited number undergo the next phase of the acceptance process. This involves a thorough inspection by two professional hoteliers. Inspection reports are subsequently filed with the Executive Committee whose members then vote, with only the world's most distinguished properties being admitted.
LHW is headquartered in New York City and maintains regional offices in 17 key cities throughout the world.
"Leading" Companies Do What They Do Best
Edward Nesta is Senior Vice President of Operations for The Leading Hotels of the World, Ltd. He is responsible for operational management, information technology, quality control and integrating three domestic offices with 14 international offices. Nesta joined LHW as part of a restructuring in which the company evaluated its core businesses, spun off non-essential business entities, and entered into a technology partnership to outsource their reservation software and hardware services, including voice services. "These moves allowed LHW to capitalise on the technology from our vendors' front office, i.e., what they do best, while allowing us to focus on what we do best, represent luxury hotels," Nesta commented.
As a result of this new direction, LHW also needed to change its networking platform and wide-area-network connectivity. When Nesta took over his position, the company had a long-standing relationship with BT Infonet. His first decision was to take advantage of BT Infonet's direction and global access, which was to move to frame relay and industry-standard TCP/IP - and away from internally, managed networks. He established four criteria: support, quality, responsiveness and customer service. "In the luxury hotel market, what makes LHW unique is our superior customer service. Therefore we expect that same level from any of our service providers," observed Nesta.
After meeting with BT Infonet, Nesta remarked, "I explained what I needed and how I wanted to be connected domestically and globally - and BT Infonet showed me the best and most cost-effective way to meet my objectives." As part of its new service, BT Infonet proposed Global Frame Relay's (GFR) VC/lan2lan service and BT Infonet's Remote Access Services (RAS) for LHW - these two services provided a global solution for the offices, offering a mix of direct connect and dial access.
A Seamless Transition
The transition from LHW's X.25 network to its GFR service took place over a weekend. The total reservation hardware and software transition required 72 hours of coordinated tasks being executed on an international level. "There was no contingency plan. We simply had to work until everything was in place and working perfectly," Nesta explained. Within the 72-hour implementation window, the reservation hardware, software and voice services, located and accessed globally from New York running X.25, were transitioned to hardware and software running TCP/IP over frame relay out of Phoenix, Arizona, with voice services supported from New York and Providence, Rhode Island.
Another task on his "to do" list included putting five international offices onto a global Local Area Network (LAN) environment, standardising 17 offices onto one PC operating system, training staff on new reservation software and connectivity to the Wide Area Network (WAN) - all within 60 days. BT Infonet had to provision the routers, establish connectivity, coordinate personnel, handle the transition and support offices around the globe. According to Nesta, these were all "must-do" activities, and were completed on time.