Hilton Amsterdam has announced the replacement of its current digital TV system with Swisscom’s award-winning Connected Hotel TV technology beginning of 2012. Along with its new IPTV system, Swisscom will roll out a comprehensive network management plan, which will further improve the user experience on all connected devices on the hotel's network. Swisscom has been Hilton Amsterdam’s long term partner for broadband services since 2003 and will continue providing High-Speed Internet Access (HSIA), Conference network services and its Business centre solution to the hotel.
Hilton Amsterdam, with 271 guest rooms, is only a short walk from the historic city center, Vondelpark and major sights such as the Van Gogh Museum and the Rijksmuseum. The hotel is famous for its waterside terrace, its glass-walled roof-top executive lounge, its trendy bar designed by Ralph Lauren and Room 902, which John Lennon and Yoko Ono used in 1969 as a stage for their bed-in-peace. Hilton Amsterdam is also renowned for its conferencing facilities serving major corporate and association clients.
The hotel’s decision to work with Swisscom for IPTV and video-on-demand services marks a move to a more integrated service delivery, according to Roberto Payer, General Manager at Hilton Amsterdam. “We were looking for a proven supplier to offer IPTV, Video-on-demand and High-speed services through a single, managed network. During the evaluation process, we looked at reference cases and found that Swisscom had already done an excellent job for these services at Dutch and international properties. Of course, our very constructive collaboration with Swisscom's account managers and technical support team over the past eight years added to our preference for Swisscom.”
"Service integration means that the network takes a central role in our IT planning”, continues Roberto Payer. “Also, given the size of our hotel operation and especially our conference activity, an enterprise-grade service management has become indispensable for us. We are happy to count on Swisscom to bring the necessary specialization and enterprise-class resources to our IT operations.”
To ensure superior service availability at all times – for HSIA as well as for IPTV and video-on-demand services –, Swisscom will pro-actively monitor the hotel’s network 24/7. Dedicated resources and specific network management tools have been deployed for immediate troubleshooting so that potential issues can be detected and counteracted by Swisscom’s network engineers before the guests notice them. Moreover, Swisscom’s advanced network reporting tool gives Hilton Amsterdam’s IT staff real-time access to all network-relevant data as well as to a wealth of network analytics.
Hilton Amsterdam is connected to a public fiber optical line that provides sufficient throughput even for the most bandwidth-hungry applications. Swisscom manages this data line on behalf of the hotel for greater responsiveness to requested changes. Scalability is a key argument for Hilton Amsterdam, as Marco Bartelsman, Sales Director Benelux for Swisscom Hospitality Services explains: “Prime business hotels like Hilton Amsterdam experience a rapid increase in the demand for bandwidth. We can augment bandwidth for Hilton Amsterdam when and where required, be it in the guest rooms, the conference area or the hotel's back-office. Moreover, we support Hilton Amsterdam with its increasingly complex network management tasks and provide consulting advices through our extensive know-how adjacent IT services. Our trained IP network engineers and our advanced network management tools form a professional IT services package that most hotels would prove difficult to provide themselves. Our large set of services and consulting capabilities combined with our local presence round up a comprehensive offering aiming at facilitating the hotel's daily operations and coping with the most stringent guest expectations.”
About Swisscom Hospitality Services
Swisscom Hospitality Services is a leader in converged technology solutions for the global hospitality industry. We provide hoteliers with integrated cost-effective communication solutions whilst meeting their guests’ unique needs.
We design, build and manage the hotel’s full network infrastructure, laying the foundation for a scalable service environment. Through the networks we manage, we deliver premium guest services such as IPTV, HSIA, branded portals, business center and conference solutions, and we support 3rd party applications to run on the same networks.
Our services cover more than 2,000 partner locations encompassing some 250’000 guest rooms across Europe, Middle East and Africa, as well as North America.
