One customer engagement of ours began when I checked into a national hotel chain and was asked, "What brings you to town?" Work, I replied, and the General Manager asked me what I do. Next she asked me if we could review her facility because she had been given a quote of $15k to extend fiber into the equipment room housing all the IT gear.
The two empty conduits next to their outside plant (copper) had pull strings and firestop and no signs of fiber or coaxial cable. The "policy" of the franchise is to completely separate the business network, including the WAN links, from the guest Wi-Fi and business computer room services for guests.
Corporate outsourcing policy also dictates that the business computer room services for guests are outsourced to one company for complete support and maintenance. The guest Wi-Fi services (minus the router) are managed and outsourced to another national company. The bandwidth is sourced to a provider. The telephone system is yet another provider, as are the front- and backend systems for IT.
The number of vendors supporting this national chain lends itself to frustration and inefficiency, in that both the general manager and ultimately customers will experience issues related to any of the services and systems provided. The costs are questionable, and it seems that the chain is supported by fragmented services that could easily be streamlined.
I listened as the general manager discussed the issues of costs, having to reinvest in more technology, complaints about the lack of bandwidth/speed for guests, the hotel telephone system not collecting residual toll call charges from guests' rooms, and the business Internet side being shamefully slow to the point of ineffectiveness for staff.
Ironically, the headquarters location serving the IT needs of the chain advertised a position to manage these very services. The vendors we invited to collaborate to meet on customer premises to engage in qualifying the needs and requirements politely refused. Instead, each party replied via email; the customer was advised, and later, equipment was ordered according to the specifications of the managed service provider. This provider also engaged the services provider for bandwidth, and upon installation, it was determined that the type of service ordered would not suffice due to the server requirements and number of routable IPs required on the LAN side.
The requirements issued from the managed services provider conflicted with the Internet services provider's abilities. Since they wouldn't communicate with one another or have a sit-down with the customer, the customer's needs sat dormant for nearly a year waiting for resolution. It appeared that more time would pass until the customer pressured the managed services providers to step up and provide an interim solution.
In addition to the contractors and providers mentioned, there are several more. As I inspected the IT room and noted the passwords, IP addresses and configurations of all the systems and gear taped to the walls, I couldn't help but wonder how the organization is possibly operating effectively. Since many of the hotels are franchisees, the requirements are often dictated by the franchisor, so it's easy to understand the complaints and concerns of the general managers who manage operations of the hotel for their owners.
The franchisor is missing an opportunity to offer greater efficiency by converging both the applications and technologies into one or even two networks and to use fewer vendors to support their needs.
The lack of communication and unwillingness of vendors to collaborate is indicative of troubles ahead. Neutralizing the organization's inefficiencies may mean taking a stronger cloud position, but this still requires the cooperation of franchisor, franchisee and supporting vendors and staff. Then, in realizing the gains in efficiency, blanket policies such as "you must have fiber" or "DSL/T1 is no longer supported" really need back end support for the franchisees. Because, in reality, not all locations will be lit with fiber, and meeting policies of the franchisor can be very costly--such as paying $15k for construction costs to extend fiber that isn't really fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) but hybrid fiber coaxial (HFC).
The impact is twofold, since the operating expenses are higher through inefficient operations (Opex). Hospitality is a vertical that cannot be too resistant to change because the dollars racked up in outsourced management costs of infrastructure and services can still eat into the profits, and these higher costs translate to higher room rates. Slow guest Wi-Fi means that guests will be annoyed, and this could potentially hurt future potential re-bookings.
Further, hotel operations are complicated by having too many vendors to rely on for technology needs. This became more evident once it was discovered that all the back office and front desk functions stopped working unexplainably two weeks after implementing the work around. It turns out the guest Wi-Fi network is using shared bandwidth with both the back office and front desk, and user experience still lacks what was expected.
The root source of the problems is poor direction-setting on the part of the franchise--maybe with good intentions, but I'd still have to ask the basic question, "How many hotel general managers can pull off implementing guest and business networks using fiber and meeting all the other technical requirements outlined by the franchise and their approved vendors?" The fact that the vendors cannot explain the customer network configuration and leave them hanging for weeks is another can of worms. Seemingly, there remains a challenge for those left with the task of running hotels.
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