BRANCHE

EVENT

REGION

SWITZERLAND

COMPANY

ASTRA HOTEL VEVEY

Astra Hotel VeveyCompliments of the hotel: Astra Hotel Vevey enhances a first-class guest experience with first-class connectivityALE and swisspro Solutions get together to deliver modern, reliable guest Wi-Fi using Alcatel-Lucent OmniAccess® Stellar Access Points.

Case StudyAstra Hotel Vevey

Case StudyAstra Hotel Vevey 2

The four-star Astra Hotel has been a family-owned establishment for over 50 years. Located in Vevey on the shores of Lake Geneva, it has developed an excellent reputation for providing warm hospitality and a “home away from home” for travelers and business guests alike.

As part of its ongoing efforts to continuously enhance the guest experience, the hotel needed to replace its legacy guest Wi-Fi service with a future-proof, high speed solution.

Alcatel-Lucent OmniAccess® Stellar Access Points have been deployed by long-standing ALE business partner swisspro Solutions to provide pervasive, high-quality guest connectivity throughout the hotel.

Enhancing the Astra Hotel digital guest offering Astra Hotel Vevey, a four-star, family owned hotel in the heart of Switzerland’s Montreux Riviera region, has developed a strong reputation for style, personal service and warm hospitality. The hotel boasts over 100 rooms, suites and conference halls tailored to guests, tourists and business groups. A team of 55 employees provides 24-hour service including restaurants, a modern bar and fitness facilities.

The Astra Hotel had built up a positive sentiment among guests over the years, and the hotel’s owners, keen to maintain the highest levels of service and a modern guest experience, identified the digital guest offerings required an upgrade. The legacy guest Wi-Fi service, which offered limited configurability and slow data speed, was set for renovation.

“Today’s guests are increasingly connected and expect access to fast, reliable connectivity wherever they go,” says Christophe Ming, General Manager of the Astra Hotel. “To continue providing a world-class level of service, we needed to replace our existing Wi-Fi service to provide a modern, high quality offering to guests.”

The selection process – bringing IT in-houseThe new Wi-Fi solution needed to continuously support up to 180 guests plus business conference attendees simultaneously. A key project requirement for the Astra Hotel was to buy hardware and manage Wi-Fi operations in-house, rather than relying on rented IT equipment and management by a third-party provider.

“Our legacy Wi-Fi was provided by a third-party operator which limited our ability to tailor the service to better meet our requirements, and the hotel incurred regular costs renting the hardware,” says Christophe Ming. “We required a modern Wi-Fi solution that could be comprehensively managed and configured internally.”

Trusted ALE partner swisspro Solutions was selected to supply and install the new solution. Swisspro Solutions has a strong reputation for delivering advanced IT solutions to the Swiss hospitality industry, so was well-placed to propose a complete Wi-Fi overhaul and a solution based on Alcatel-Lucent OmniAccess® Stellar technology. Swift, high

ASTRA HOTEL VEVEY: FACTS & FIGURES

• Astra Hotel Vevey is a family owned and managed four-star hotel located on the Montreux Riviera in Lavaux region of Switzerland.

• With over 100 rooms and suites available to guests, the Astra Hotel also offers a wide range of business and conference facilities, a choice of restaurants including the historical Brasserie La Coupole 1912 and breath-taking panoramic rooftop amenities.

• The highspeed Wi-Fi solution is part of the extensive renovation and upgrade undertaken by the hotel and completed in March 2019.

For more information, visit: https://www.astra-hotel.ch/

Case StudyAstra Hotel Vevey 3

quality customer service and advanced product capabilities were key factors in the Astra Hotel selection of ALE and swisspro Solutions for this project.

“Selecting ALE and swisspro Solutions for this project wasn’t a decision we took lightly,” comments Christophe Ming. “The Astra Hotel management team carried out extensive market and competitor research and found ALE solutions to be both high quality and cost-effective.”

swisspro Solutions managed the Wi-Fi project from start to finish, proposing a development tailored to the specific requirements of Astra Hotel and ensuring installation was completed in a quick and discreet manner

Instant availability, zero disruptionThe new solution became fully operational in September, 2018. Once the project details were agreed by all stakeholders, swisspro Solutions technical experts rapidly completed the installation. This ensured downtime caused by switching from legacy Wi-Fi to the new solution was measured in minutes, not hours.

“Keeping guest disruption to a minimum during installation was a key requirement for the Astra Hotel team,” says Philippe Bürki, Head of Sales West at swisspro Solutions. “Stellar access points offer both quick and intuitive deployment, and to further minimize downtime we put the new Wi-Fi solution live in the hotel floor-by-floor.”

Astra Hotel Vevey now offers high speed Wi-Fi for guests, operating on both the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands for greater reliability. Wi-Fi services are easily managed and configured internally by the Astra Hotel management team. Astra Hotel guests can simply connect and register for free Wi-Fi through a branded form with customized welcome text. The hotel’s management team can accurately capture guest registration details and redirect Wi-Fi users to customer surveys and relevant hotel promotions.

“We needed the physical hardware installation to be both fast and discreet, and swisspro Solutions delivered,” says Christophe Ming. “We’ve been able to immediately enjoy the benefits of the new solution, and have already begun developing and rolling out customized registration screens and guest promotions.”

Serving up future-proof guest connectivityToday, the new Astra Hotel guest Wi-Fi solution has been operating without any issues for over six months. The Astra Hotel management plan to further upgrade data speeds from 100 Mb/s to 200 Mb/s in the coming months, increasing the bandwidth available to both guests and the hotel’s administrative team.

«Maintaining our excellent reputation among guests and developing customer loyalty is a priority for us. We have glowing feedback on review sites and social media and providing a best-of-breed Wi-Fi solution for our guests is another piece in the puzzle,» says Christophe Ming, General Manager of the Astra Hotel. «The new Wi-Fi solution works exactly as intended, so we’ve had no need for further technical support from ALE or swisspro Solutions.»

ABOUT SWISSPRO SOLUTIONS

swisspro Solutions AG is a premium ALE business partner specialising in the deployment of network and communication solutions and smart building systems.

An ALE strategic partner since 2012, swisspro Solutions was awarded the ALE Business Partner Excellence Award in 2018 for outstanding achievements in helping Swiss organisations successfully adopt ALE products and solutions.

For more information, visit: https://www.swisspro.ch

www.al-enterprise.com The Alcatel-Lucent name and logo are trademarks of Nokia used under license by ALE. To view other trademarks used by affiliated companies of ALE Holding, visit: www.al-enterprise.com/en/legal/trademarks-copyright. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. The information presented is subject to change without notice. Neither ALE Holding nor any of its affiliates assumes any responsibility for inaccuracies contained herein. © 2019 ALE International. All rights reserved. MPR00391166-en (June 2019)

Philippe Bürki, Head of Sales West at swisspro Solutions explains the reasons for the project’s success. «We worked closely with the Astra Hotel team since day one to ensure we had a comprehensive picture of their requirements and could deliver the new Wi-Fi solution with minimal disruption. Thanks to the simplicity of the Stellar access point installation, we’ve been able to deliver this project in a timescale convenient to the hotel to avoid disrupting guests and hotel operations.»

«At ALE, we recognize the importance for hoteliers to provide guest connectivity and mobility services as standard without the need for major investment,» says Ralph Hürlimann, Channel Sales Manager at ALE. “Our Alcatel-Lucent OmniAccess® Stellar range of access points offer a friction-free installation, simple scalability and a consistently high quality of service – ideal for the hospitality industry.”

CHALLENGES

• Legacy Wi-Fi guest offering

• Reliant on rented IT equipment and third-party management

• Slow data traffic

SOLUTION

• Alcatel-Lucent OmniAccess® Stellar Access Points

BENEFITS

• High-speed secure guest Wi-Fi

• Pervasive, hotel-wide connectivity

• Enhanced configuration and management capabilities