Hotel chain signs major outsourcing deal

Global hotel operator Le Méridien has signed a €39m outsourcing contract with Equant to standardise its IT systems.

As a result of a series of mergers, demergers and acquisitions, Le Méridien's IT infrastructure comprised various proprietary systems which needed consolidating and standardising.

Equant will host the hotel group's applications on an IP virtual private network, including property and yield management, sales and catering, email, accounting and booking.

The network will be based at Equant's European data centre, and will provide separate back-up, disaster recovery and testing facilities.

Le Méridien's hotels in Germany and Brussels have already been moved over, and the remaining 35 will be migrated over the next 20 months.

Another 100 hotels are leased or managed by Le Méridien.

"The distinction between our owned and leased or managed hotels puts us in a position to offer these services to franchised hotels once our own are using this system," explained Jim Lamb, chief information officer at the hotel group.

John Hogan, Le Méridien's director of technical services, told vnunet.com: "We were looking for a single service provider that could give us an end-to-end view of our infrastructure and whose network extended into its data centre."

Equant's approach to the deal and its networking expertise proved decisive during a lengthy bidding process.

"Equant offered flexibility in terms of change management windows and bespoke service level agreements," said Hogan.

Le Méridien is also exploring the convergence of its data and voice networks.

"We're talking to Equant about this right now," confirmed Hogan. "We will dip a toe in these waters and see if we can use it in the future."