Global travel leader adopts standard network templates as-a service to accelerate digital transformation

It has been a less than smooth recovery for the travel and holiday sector. As other industries lurch back into post-pandemic operations, the world of travel remains hampered with schedule cancellations and staff shortages.

Yet TUI Group is supremely optimistic. Its international hotel brand TUI BLUE is embarked on a global expansion that will see the business triple in size.

“In times of uncertainty, consumers invest in a brand they can trust,” says Michael Cares, Group IT Director, TUI Hotels & Resorts. “We’re poised for rapid growth because our customers trust TUI, they trust the brand and our experience. This trust fuels our confidence.”

Balancing individuality with consistent operations

By early 2020, TUI BLUE had grown to become an international brand of 100 hotels and resorts, mainly in Europe. Today, the company is aiming to land a global portfolio of some 300 hotels. The expansion will see a push into Southeast Asia, China, Africa and the Middle East. The strategy will involve some international partnerships in which TUI BLUE hotels are operated either under management contracts or by franchisees.

“Our journey has only just started,” says Cares. “We’ve opened development offices in Dubai and Hong Kong. We’re currently working on hotel opportunities in China, South-East Asia and Africa.”

TUI wants to find the ideal balance between hotels with individuality and a global business with consistent operations.

“First and foremost, it’s all about the guest experience and the personalisation of that engagement,” says Cares. “We want to explore how digital processes can support the guest journey in our hotels.”

Key to this will be a centrally managed high-performance network providing a consistent and standards-based digital layer for integrating new solutions and platforms in every hotel.

Establishing new standards of network connectivity

Aruba is one of the building blocks of the TUI BLUE growth strategy. Its ESP architecture will enable TUI BLUE to manage a global portfolio of hotels from the group’s head office in Hanover, Germany. It will reduce the time needed to bring a new property onto the network and establish new standards of connectivity across each location.

“I wanted a company that understood the hospitality world and could share informed ideas with us for the future,” Cares explains. “We know Aruba are experts in the hospitality world and are geared to providing networking solutions for the industry. With Aruba we have the best of both worlds: technology solutions and hospitality expertise. This is what makes Aruba a valuable partner.”

The Aruba architecture offers a network template for every type of TUI BLUE property. It ensures connectivity throughout a resort, including beachside. It features Aruba 500-series access points, Aruba access switches including the CX series. Aruba Central (MSP mode) provides the TUI IT team with a cloud-based management platform, with edge security, automation and AI-powered insights into network health.

“We can then apply an appropriate template mapped against a specific location,” says Kai Wolffram, Head of Global Operations & Analytics, TUI Hotels & Resorts.

Accelerating the deployment of digital touchpoints

The Aruba network upgrade enables TUI BLUE to introduce new digital capabilities across each location. It establishes consistent performance and the ability to monitor network health from one central location.

The open architecture simplifies the integration of third-party hospitality applications, from smart locks to room service to media content. Indeed, given TUI’s scale and global reputation, it will make the business an attractive partner for innovators looking to collaborate on the latest digital projects.

Cares says this will help keep the business at the forefront of the sector. It will also enable TUI BLUE to harvest new levels of data. This data will be key to driving greater personalisation, from room choices to a guest’s favourite drinks. It is better able to identify trends within different customer segments.

“When our Wi-Fi was localised it was hard to share data effectively,” says Cares. “Network consistency changes that. We will be able to understand our guests’ preferences and act on them wherever they travel in the TUI network. We can use data to improve the guest experience.”

Creating new levels of operational efficiency

The guest experience is the primary driver, but the hospitality sector is price sensitive. TUI wants to find new levels of industry efficiency. It is keen to explore how the Aruba network can support smart hotel capabilities such as asset tracking, robot cleaners and wayfinding, says Cares.

Digitisation creates an opportunity to optimise housekeeping through automatic schedule management. Maintenance management systems, integrated with housekeeping, drastically improve issue response times. This may be a mundane aspect of the hospitality industry but efficiencies in the back-end mean more time and resource to spend with guests.

“We call this back-end operation our ‘digital front office’,” Cares says. “Our business aims were twofold. To enrich the guest experience and to achieve efficient operations. An improved, consistent network is key to driving operational efficiencies and cost savings.”

Underpinning a focus on the guest experience

As far as is possible, the engagement future-proofs TUI’s network approach, says Cares: “What’s really helped our business is how we can scale with partners worldwide without sending people over to manage things locally. We changed the Wi-Fi in three of our Austrian hotels without any of my team on site. A local provider simply discussed the template configurations with Aruba and implemented them.”

The Aruba approach creates a network management layer, where individual hardware components can be swapped and upgraded when necessary, without needing to rethink the architecture. The clarity of the templates and management layer also allow TUI to pitch a superior network-as-a-service to new franchisees or partner properties.

The advantage to TUI BLUE, Cares says, is that it secures network expertise without diverting attention from the core function of the business: “We are a travel company, not an IT service provider.

“For guests, connectivity is almost as important as running water and we know many of them prefer to book or check-in via the TUI BLUE app. But digital can never replace personal interaction. Everything we do that is digital is there to ensure that guests enjoy their stays with us.”