Hospitality Solutions

The hospitality industry is highly competitive with low market concentration. Hospitality providers are facing tough business challenges such as finding, hiring and retaining qualified and skilled employees, increasing overall costs of construction and renovation projects, keeping up with technology, changing demographics and impact on travel trends and concern for future shrinking profits. With Nortel's innovating technologies and strategic services, Nortel is helping most of the top players in the industry - Marriott International Inc., Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. and Hilton Hotels Corporation to attract and retain the guest or fan, generate new revenues with innovative services, improve staff productivity and satisfaction without added complexity.

• Build a secure, reliable and voice grade IP infrastructure consisting of network components such as the Ethernet switches, routers, WLAN, Communications servers and security. Nortel's data portfolio is up to 7x more resilient, performs up to 20x better, offers up to 50% lower total cost of ownership and uses up to 40% less energy than competing products, according to independent test results. This is the kind of performance for real-time applications that you want to deploy now and in the future. Nortel enables you to migrate to IP at your own pace; our technology has an evergreen policy, so that we protect your investment as well as make sure that you can connect to analogue interfaces.
• Integrate your other systems such as the back office, Property Management System, Reservations, in-room systems, POS and finance with the communications infrastructure. You need to make sure that they can work together.
• Add Nortel's Mobility solution and start enhancing the guest experience, saving money and improving employee satisfaction and productivity immediately. Your employees will be able to reduce service times and be happier, because they have the tools they need to be more productive. Our customers save on cellular charges immediately. Secondly, you will be able to extend services to your guests throughout the property, indoor and outdoor, with Nortel's mobility solutions. Whether it's to give your guests Internet access from the pool or have POS at the golf course, it will generate more revenue for you and enhance the guest experience.
• Deploy advanced applications and clients such as display phone services, messaging for guests and staff, presence for staff, room ordering services and advertising, contact center for customer service, conferencing services and guest mobile phones. You will further enhance the guest experience and generate more revenues from new sources.
• Simplify your operations with Nortel Global Services by leveraging Nortel's global reach to integrate and manage or host communications infrastructure and third-party vendor systems. Stay competitive and up to date with the latest technology without adding complexity.

Secure and Voice Grade IP Infrastructure: All communications systems within the hotel property, including the property management system (PMS), point of sale (POS) system, telephone system, staff PCs at the front desk and restaurant, are connected to the hotel network infrastructure. Using a Nortel converged IP infrastructure consisting of data, VoIP and wireless platforms, enables the hotel to offer evolving applications to personalize service and generate incremental revenues.

• MotorCity Casino·Hotel's Nortel network enables more than $5 billion in total financial transactions per year which includes all of its slot machines, all of its table games, all of its food and beverage transactions and all of its hotel transactions!

IP Telephony: By using the combination of Nortel's IP Telephony platforms with the IP Phones and Application Gateway, personalized information (based on recorded preferences) can be pushed out to guests about tours and events within the hotel or nearby attractions. At the same time, hotels can increase revenue by making it easy for guests to use the click-to-call feature on the IP Phone to order directly from the hotel's restaurant or room service, while customized promotions on the IP Phone LCD display can inform them of spa services and special gift shop offerings. The guest can then be connected to an in-house contact center agent who can book a tour, reserve a table at a restaurant or book a table in the hotel casino. Hotels can also sell advertising space to local businesses near the hotel.

Contact Center: Hoteliers use Nortel's Contact Center portfolio for guest relations and hotel reservations. Hotel agents can communicate with the guest via phone, e-mail, chat and multimedia, and route callers to the agent with the appropriate skill set to better serve the guest. Guests can be prioritized based on Players Club number, account status, language preference, and reason for calling. The agent can collect data from guests-such as room temperature preference-that allows the hotel to provide personalized guest service.

Mobility: Hospitality providers such as W Hotels are deploying wireless solutions from Nortel to reduce service times and improve personalized service for their guests, resulting in improved employee productivity. Guests can use a Virtual Butler service to message staff through mobile handsets anywhere on the property. MotorCity Casino·Hotel gave its highly mobile staff the tools they needed to stay connected, resulting in fewer missed calls, more efficiency and thousands of dollar of savings per month. Hotels and resorts are also using Nortel's award-winning WLAN portfolio to offer High Speed Internet Access (HSIA) for reliable data, voice and multimedia services in public areas such as meeting facilities, lobby, restaurants, etc. Hotels and resorts with large outdoor facilities and convention centers with daily changing needs find it economical and easy to deploy Nortel's wireless mesh products.

Unified Communications (UC): To provide the ultimate guest experience, hotel staff must be constantly available not only to patrons but to each other. Unified Communications for hoteliers enables mobile contact between the front desk, housekeeping, room service, restaurants, maintenance and management departments. For example, a bellhop delivering luggage to the 21st floor can receive notification via PDA that a guest on the 20th floor is about to depart, enabling him to save time and pick up the luggage on his way back to the lobby. Similarly, "presence" offers real-time information about the status of staff so that they can be reached anytime anywhere using instant message, text or voice. Leveraging our partnerships with Microsoft and IBM, as well as Nortel's IP Telephony and Contact Center technology, Nortel's UC solution closes the gap between guest requests and guest service, and this closed gap is what makes a hotel's operation efficient and productive. Nortel's UC solution for hoteliers also includes advanced applications such as virtual butler, mobile self-service check-in and High Speed Internet Access.

Guest & Staff Messaging: Messaging is used in two ways in a hotel environment-guest-to-staff messaging and staff-to-staff messaging. Both of these are critical to guest satisfaction while the latter is also critical to employee productivity and morale. Using HMS 400, guests can schedule and cancel wake-up calls easily with an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system, saving them time, and Housekeeping can send mini-bar consumption and room status updates directly to the Property Management System. Guest mail boxes are set up and torn down at check-in and check-out by signaling from the hotel PMS. For a more sophisticated staff messaging solution, such as getting messages from a PC rather than a phone, hotels can purchase Nortel's unified messaging solution.

Conferencing Services: Chain hotels can generate incremental revenue by offering video conference services to local area businesses. A company can book a time and date for a video conference in two or more of the hotel's participating properties via a web booking service and choose technical options such as Telepresence or video conferencing, audio conferencing which would include High Speed Internet Access (HSIA), food and beverage services and other supporting resource needs.

Managed Services: Cover all the tasks, tools and infrastructure vital to maintain and manage a reliable communications network. This portfolio consists of Managed Data and Managed Voice Services as well as Assisted Operate Services leveraging a 20-year, proven track record of Nortel expertise and processes. Managed Services streamline network management for improved network performance, maximum reliability, ability to deploy new technology quickly, reduced OPEX and maximum return on CAPEX. Hospitality providers are able to improve staff utilization and effectively address scarce skills requirements, temporary peak in workload and staff shortages.

Hosted Services: Enable hospitality customers to save money, reduce the need to increase IT staff and increase employee productivity by deploying IP-based communication applications, such as Hosted IP Telephony, Unified Communications, Contact Centers and IVR. Hospitality providers can buy only what they need, when they need it, and for how long they need it through a simple and predictable monthly pricing plan. Nortel's Hosted Services helps the customer stay ahead of the technology curve to deliver personalized and unique services to their guests without adding complexity.