During the Corona crisis, hotels are looking for growth drivers and find them in the modernisation of their IT networks. A group of experts reported from practice at the Digital Forum of the Allgemeine Hotel- und Gastronomie-Zeitung in February. Emilio Dragas, CEO of m3connect, and Niklas Unger, Director of IT & Digital Business at B&B Hotels, explained how B&B Hotels drove the digitalisation of its properties. 1800 participants were interested in their insights regarding the change of the infrastructure at the virtual part of this year’s German Hotel Congress.

The rollout at B&B Hotels was preceded by an intensive conception phase. Before new processes and a new Property Management System (PMS) were established in 138 properties in less than 6 months, a new foundation had to be laid. “We first defined the requirements for the Future Network project together with B&B Hotels,” described Emilio Dragas from m3connect. “Therefore, we specified all the important goals such as high bandwidth and high-speed internet, redundancy and failover, performance monitoring and SLA transparency, security and the ability to provide applications and cloud services easily and quickly.” All of this needed to be available not only at existing hotels, but also at all new properties. “Our goal was to create a hotel out of a suitcase – that means, we are able to provide the complete infrastructure to every new hotel in the shortest possible time,” Emilio Dragas described.

Niklas Unger from B&B Hotels confirmed the head start that the networked infrastructure of m3connect enables: “A well-organized network creates the basis for further growth and for service-oriented processes from which the guest benefits.”  As an example, he cited the cashless processing of services, which B&B Hotels is currently pushing forward in order to offer guests further added value.

Although the path of B&B Hotels with m3connect was confirmed as a sustainable model for hotel chains, the operators of individual businesses and holiday hotels still questioned how they could position themselves to follow the trend. They too “should take stock,” Emilio Dragas recommended. They too “would have to look at the whole in order to divide a big investment into several building blocks.”

At the end of the digital forum, it was clear that today’s investments in network infrastructure are tomorrow’s profits for hotels of all sizes.

At its virtual start of the year, the German Hotel Congress puts the digitalisation potential of hotel networks in the spotlight. m3connect and B&B Hotels are invited as experts to present their Future Network project. Emilio Dragas, CEO of m3connect, and Niklas Unger, Director of IT & Digital Business at B&B Hotels, will provide first-hand information. The “Digital Forum on the Status Quo Hotel Industry” will take place on 1 February.

In the Future Network project, m3connect has created the infrastructure for end-to-end digital hotel operations at B&B Hotels. The backbone is a fibre-optic-based gigabit network. A Software Defined Wide Area Network (SDWAN) makes the networking of B&B Hotels flexible, saves costs and contributes to fail-safety. A more than sufficient bandwidth is available to all applications. This not only provides for current hotel operations and all guest services, but also for all future digitalisation projects.

m3connect is a known name in the hospitality industry. In the joint Future Network project, the wireless internet service provider supports the management of B&B Hotels in their digital transformation. With more than 500 hotels in Europe, including almost 140 in Germany, the hotel chain is a pioneer in digitalisation in the hospitality industry.

At the forum of the German Hotel Congress, it will become clear that the Corona crisis has intensified the digitalisation push and that investments in powerful hotel networks represent a competitive advantage after the crisis. Information and free registration at https://ahgz.dfvcg-events.de/hotelkongress/digitales-forum/.

m3connect was named “WLAN Top Performer 2020” at the 15th LANCOM Top Partner Summit. At the summit on December 15, m3connect placed among the top three of over 7,000 LANCOM partners in the WLAN category.

The fact that the Summit was held virtually for the first time due to Covid 19 restrictions did not diminish its importance. Almost 140 participants were logged into the live stream of the event. Three partners each received awards in the categories WLAN, Cloud, Network Connectivity, Switches, Security and Largest Growth. The program also included outlooks on future technology and business development.

The award confirmed the partnership between m3connect and LANCOM as two leading international technology providers from the Aachen region. m3connect has been a Platinum Partner of LANCOM Systems for many years. Emilio Dragas, Managing Director of m3connect, confirms the success of this cooperation: “We have much more in common with LANCOM than the quality of our products and services. We are both very agile companies with creative teams – a foundation for our joint success.”

It was the 15th Top Partner Summit to which LANCOM Systems, the German supplier of network infrastructure, had invited its partners. m3connect has already won several awards. The two Top Partners have become a leading duo in setting up and supporting dynamic networks in retail, hospitality, healthcare, finance, industry, services and administration.

For the IT network and security industry, the summit was much more than a status update. The main focus was on the development of new technologies and markets. It became clear that m3connect, together with LANCOM, will continue to play a leading role in the industry.

m3connect is supporting BMW in network planning and the deployment of a private 5G campus network. The 5G wireless technology, which is envisioned for networking various logistics solutions, is to be set up at the BMW Group factory in Dingolfing.
At the moment we’re still looking for reinforcement for our 5G team. Click here for our open vacancies and the press release.

The HotelExpo 2020 will take place in Berlin on February 03 and 04. The latest trends and most innovative ideas of the industry to touch for two days – this is the innovation forum for the hotel and catering industry parallel to the German Hotel Congress.

At our booth no. 36 we give visitors the opportunity to experience conn4hospitality in action. We cordially invite you to visit us and discover the possibilities of the cloud-based overall solution, to get to know the different features and to pave the way for digitalization.

This year’s HTNG will take place in Monte Carlo from 18th to 20th November.
Fabienne Rahier, Head of Marketing & HR, and Emilio Dragas, CEO, are already on location and look forward to exciting discussions with familiar and new faces from the industry. Feel free to contact them directly to arrange a meeting on site.

We wish all participants a few exciting days with many new insights and acquaintances.

For the second year in a row people rocked for a good cause in Rott, Germany!

On August 30th and 31st almost 3,500 festival visitors sang and danced to great tribute bands in warm summer temperatures. This year Living Theory, Bounce, Reggatta de Blanc, Marley’s Ghost, René Innemee & The Revival Band and Help! hit the stage and let the fans revel in memories of their childhood and youth.

As last year the revenues from the ticket sale will be donated completely to charities. To make this possible, the festival relies – besides us as main sponsor – on two other big sponsors Bauer+Kirch and e-Dynamics, as well as certain other supporters from the region.

Prior to the festival, every aid organization and institution could apply for a place on the donation list.

We are very happy to be able to support this fantastic festival and hope for perfect weather for the next festival in 2020!

Save the date: August 21st and 22nd – Rock in Rott 2020

Facebook: Rock in Rott
Info: RockinRott.de

Photo Credits: Björn Mertes from Fightback against Poverty

This year the International Hotel Technology Forum will take place from 14 – 16 May in Croatia’s beautiful capital Zagreb.
Of course we didn’t miss the opportunity to be there again!

We are looking forward to exciting topics, new encounters and inspiring conversations.

“Something technical” is what more and more women do for a living and young girls are becoming increasingly enthusiastic about the topic around the IT area. Therefor it is great that the Girls’Day takes place again this year; a day on which girls have the chance to get a taste of working life. On Thursday, 28 March, we welcome three interested students to m3connect and would like to welcome them warmly. After a short acquaintance with our tasks and premises, the tree of them will get to work on their own and gain their first programming experience with the Calliope – a mini computer. How is a website created and how does my smartphone know how many steps I have taken? We will get to the bottom of these and many other questions together. We are looking forward to an exciting day.

What the technological future should look like can be discovered since today at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. For four days everything there will revolve around topics such as Intelligent Connectivity, Industry 4.0 or AI. The new 5G mobile communications network will also play an important role. We are looking forward to many interesting news and inspiring conversations. You also attend the Mobile World Congress? Then feel free to contact us and arrange a meeting with us. We look forward to exciting discussions and exchanges with you.