GEC NEWS WIRETotal number of years in service:
16 years in IT including 14 years specialized in the hospitality systems of five stars hotels
Do you call yourself a digital organization? If yes, why?
Yes. We are a new growing chain comparing to another hospitality old chains in the world which is an advantage for us as a technology leaders to start from the end point of others, our aim is to impress our guests with new and up to date room technologies and to use the technology as a compete weapon in a market fully of competitions, I am proud to say that we are using paper work in a very limited occasions which is matching our firm vision for the modern management and saving environment , The digital communication now days is going far beyond the email correspondences , it’s about sharing the same information on spot ( reading from the same page) in order to take the right decisions , and this is exactly what we are doing by giving our employees the access to all the necessary information for them anytime from anywhere.
What are your top projects for the next 6 months?
I will be the IT project leader and management consultant for the general renovation of Coral Al-Khobar hotel , this project will take around 9 months and I will be responsible for the network infrastructure re- establishment and all the IT related projects implementation, I will concentrate on creating a fully IP infrastructure from A to Z, and I mean to have IT environment which allow us to discard the paper work completely and to have a fully integrated digital system to be an example for the future management style
What are the key technologies challenges faced by your sector?
Being a Technology In charge in a hospitality sector may put you in some challenges of balancing between the available high technology and the reasonable level for hotels guests experience , We should merge the advance technology in a simple and friendly way of using in order to keep all guests familiar with our services regardless their technical backgrounds, we should always keep in mind that not all our customers are IT specialists and they may not be interested on the complicated ways of dealing with Technology but they are still feel happy when they see something new and untraditional, this is our role to keep it impressive and simple in the same time.
What kind of vendor/solution provider engagement do you look forward to in 2018?
We are looking to the cloud and systems centralization solutions which is the general trend now days, it’s wonderful for every executive to have a mobile office with full access to all files and resources from anywhere, with minimum manning power and maximum data security beside the huge shared database between all the chain group members.
To do list for 2018
- New network infrastructure
- IP phone system
- IP TV
- IP security cameras
- Data cloud integration
- IP signage system
- Full Hardware upgrade
- Full Oracle hospitality integrated system
- Smart guests rooms setup
- Mobile integrated door locks system
- To create the best example of smart hotel in Saudi Arabia
