Hotel business unifies service management

International hotelier NH Hoteles has rationalised its IT service desk procedure in anticipation of doubling its business by 2009.

The company operates 350 hotels for business guests in 20 countries, and its IT infrastructure is maintained by only 50 IT staff who support 5,000 IT users out of 12,000 staff.

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Previously the company had IT teams in six locations in Argentina, Europe and Mexico operating independently of each other.

NH Hoteles service delivery manager Simon Pike said: "Each one of them was doing their own thing in terms of supporting users."

The hotelier is now integrating its LANdesk desktop management system with an ITIL compliant offering from service management specialist Touchpaper, which allows system incidents to be monitored centrally and work apportioned from a central hub.

The benefit for the business is more robust systems to support its time-poor clientele.

Pike said: "The core business is based around serving business customers - booking them, checking them in and charging them. Their time is precious and we have to have systems that don't keep these people waiting around. So, if there is an issue with the hotel management system, we can assign the work to the person best placed to do it."