A network that welcomes technology and enables great guest experience

You don’t get to win the ‘Best Hotel Chain in Denmark’ title at Danish Travel Awards, the largest annual event in the country’s hospitality industry, by sheer chance or coincidence. Located at some of the most beautiful places in Denmark – on the edge of the wood, at the edge of the water, or both – the resorts owned by Sinatur Hotel & Konference, ranging from charming old manors to modern structures in Nordic minimalism, are as remarkable as their surroundings.

Whether it’s catering to the needs of individual travelers or business groups, every hotel operation depends on a reliable and high-performing network that is secure and flexible enough to support various client devices, applications, and use cases. In that regard, Sinatur was no exception.

Today, it’s not unusual to see guests bringing in all kinds of different technologies that require seamless connectivity, e.g. whole company departments teleconferencing on Microsoft Teams. At the same time, families with children may wish to stay in and binge watch a new Netflix show. With no server resources on site, all these high-bandwidth applications depend on the Internet connection. Low throughput means poor customer experiences – something that every hotel business wishes to avoid.

“The reliability and speed of Internet connection through a professional Wi-Fi network that covers every inch of our premises is fundamental for enabling and supporting a large number of conferences held regularly at Sinatur Hotels. Lately, we have observed a growing demand for new digital services and stronger cybersecurity measures from our customers, which we needed to address through a network infrastructure upgrade”, says Claus Nielsen, General Manager at Sinatur Hotel & Konference.

To address the increasing challenges related to the network capacity and coverage, and to support the growing number of use cases and applications, the customer chose to modernize its decade-old, legacy infrastructure in all six locations. To that end, TELE IT, a long-term partner of Sinatur Hotel & Konference, deployed a scalable, wired and wireless solution managed easily in the cloud. Following best practices and standards in hospitality applications, every hotel room in each hotel has been equipped with a compact, yet highly efficient and functional Wi-Fi 6 access point.

“We chose Extreme Networks equipment because of its reliability and flexibility that we have come to know over the years. By leveraging advanced capabilities supporting wireless IoT connectivity, as well as high-speed Ethernet ports, we delivered a robust platform capable of powering modern digital amenities such as digital phones and Internet-provided television”, says Henrik Overgaard, CEO of TELE IT. “We were also able to solve some actual problems. For example, the implementation of the Wi-Fi calling functionality has helped address the issue of poor cellular coverage in some of the more remotely located hotels.”

Today, the network in each of Sinatur’s locations is flexible enough to support a vast array of devices and applications, from hospitality focused, guest facing services to technical infrastructure such as photovoltaic systems. Essentially anything can be added into the network. However, the specific thing about hotel environments is that you never know what guests are going to bring in.

To address the issue of network security, TELE IT segmented the network into isolated, secure VLANs. With the introduction of ExtremeCloud IQ management platform, user, device, and application profiling at the edge of the network identifies and fine tunes network access based on role and privileges, ensuring secure, compliant, and high-performance wireless connectivity.

Modernizing the network infrastructure at any hotel isn’t exactly a walk in the park, as the time slot for the network to be down must be as minimal as possible. Thanks to the fact that Sinatur chose a cloud-managed solution, the IT team was able to deploy new switches and access points in no time.

“As we serve as Sinatur’s single point of contact for everything related to network and security, including managing firewall and Internet connection, reliability is one of the many reasons why we choose to partner with Extreme”, says Henrik Overgaard. “All we had to do was to pre-configure the devices earlier and just plug them in – the ExtremeCloud IQ platform and its predetermined profiles did the rest. Everything was up and running again in less than a day. Another great benefit for the customer is that they don’t need a highly qualified IT personnel on site; we can manage everything remotely.”

Another characteristic of any hotel deployment is the need for network reliability, measured by its continuous uptime and availability. Guests won't tolerate anything less than excellent service and digital amenities, much like they expect hot water in the shower. In that context, the solution delivered by TELE IT deserves five stars out of five.

“With a granular visibility of the network, applications and clients, we can identify and resolve any end-user issues quickly to make sure everything is running flawlessly. Since the implementation of the new solution, we have never seen a network outage at any of the Sinatur’s six hotels”, says Henrik Overgaard.

“The quality and seamless availability of the network connection is key for the day-to-day operation of our business and, not unlike other services like food, cleaning or room service, constitutes a vital part of how customers perceive and evaluate our hotels. Whether it’s the individual rooms, lobby space or conference area – we’ve made our priority to ensure a high-quality access to a network that supports diverse end-devices, hotel’s IT equipment, and advanced use cases”, Claus Nielsen sums up.

Founded in 2002, TELE IT provides a finely selected range of services centered around IT security, networks and Wi-Fi, as well as IT communication. With a strong focus on the excellence of provided solutions, close collaboration, and high-quality technical support, TELE IT delivers tailor-made solutions aimed at catering to the specific needs of small and medium enterprises – always with the customer’s satisfaction in mind. The company has been collaborating closely with Extreme Networks for the last 15 years, primarily delivering best-in-class cloud network solutions based around the industry-leading ExtremeCloud IQ network management platform.