Are you looking for the service, and not the project? This article is a customer case study. If you arrived here looking for hospitality IT: network, Wi-Fi, CCTV and PMS, that is the page you are interested in.
In this article
- Six hotels within a five-minute walk of each other
- What is installed in each hotel
- A hotel network is not an office network
- Video surveillance and CCTV over the same network, securely
- PMS, Microsoft 365 and day-to-day operations
- Alarm monitoring and permanent support
- Case by case, hotel by hotel
- Why concentration in one area is worth money
Between Praça dos Restauradores and Rossio, in a block that can be crossed on foot in a few minutes, DataRoad installed and maintains the IT infrastructure of six hotels. É uma das zonas mais movimentadas e mais bem localizadas de Lisboa — e, para quem opera hotelaria, uma das mais exigentes: edifícios antigos e classificados, paredes de meio metro que não deixam passar sinal, ocupação alta o ano inteiro e hóspedes que formam opinião sobre o hotel pelo Wi‑Fi antes de formarem opinião sobre a cama.
Project details
- Client
- Six hotels in the Restauradores and Rossio area, Lisbon
- Sector
- Hospitality
- Intervention
- Cablagem e infraestrutura de rede · Wi‑Fi de hóspedes · Firewall e segurança · Videovigilância e CCTV · Conectividade · PMS · Microsoft 365 · Monitorização alarmística · Suporte permanente IT Unlimited
- Regime
- Turnkey installation and ongoing contract support
Six hotels within a five-minute walk of each other
Hotels are the BePoet Hotel, o BeHotel, o Rossio Plaza Hotel, o Nicola Rossio Hotel, o LX Arch Rossio Hotel and Ouro Rossio Hotel. They all operate within the same perimeter, they all receive international guests all year round, and today they all share the same technical standard: the same network architecture, the same security criteria, the same monitoring console and the same team answering the phone.
We didn't get there all at once. Each hotel came in at its own time, with its own project and construction schedule. What happened — and this is the part that matters to those who manage hotel units — is that from the second hotel onwards, DataRoad stopped installing isolated networks and started operating a park.
What is installed in each hotel
The scope is the same in all units, scaled to the floor plan and number of bedrooms of each:
Structured cabling and network infrastructure. The patch panel, the backbone fibre, the switches and every network point right up to the bedroom. It is the unseen layer that dictates everything else: a poorly wired network cannot be fixed with better equipment. On this matter, see networks and structured cabling.
Wi‑Fi de hóspedes. Coverage in rooms, corridors, reception, restaurant, terraces and service areas, with a coverage survey carried out on the building rather than on the floor plan. The guest network is completely separate from the hotel’s operating network — a guest's laptop cannot see the PMS, POS systems, cameras, or management computers. Service detail in wireless networks for hotels.
Firewall and security. Firewall with VLAN segmentation, network-based policies, filtering and logging. This is what makes it possible to have guests, staff, PMS, CCTV and home automation in the same building without them being able to access one another. See firewalls and cybersecurity.
Video surveillance and CCTV. IP cameras at entrances, reception, access corridors, technical areas and common areas, with local recording, defined retention and controlled access. See CCTV.
Connectivity. Circuitos de internet dimensionados à ocupação real, com o encaminhamento pensado para o hotel não ficar sem check‑in quando uma linha falha.
PMS. Installation, grid connection and maintenance of the hotel management system, with the reception desks, back office and integrations operational.
Microsoft 365. Email, file sharing and centrally managed accounts, with security policies and access controls for people joining and leaving the team. View Microsoft 365.
Alarm monitoring and 24/7 support. All critical equipment is under monitoring; when something goes down, the alarm reaches DataRoad before it reaches reception.
A hotel network is not an office network
Num escritório, os utilizadores são conhecidos, os equipamentos são da empresa e o horário é das nove às seis. Num hotel, nada disso é verdade. Os utilizadores mudam todos os dias, trazem os seus próprios equipamentos, ligam‑se sem ajuda de ninguém e, se a ligação não funcionar, escrevem‑no numa avaliação pública que fica lá para sempre.
This changes the network design at three specific points:
Density, not area. A busy hotel floor can have three to four devices connected per room at the same time. What counts is not covering square metres — it is handling simultaneous devices, without a streaming session in one room degrading a work call in the next.
Separation between guests. A guest should not be able to see another guest's equipment on the same network. It sounds obvious; it is one of the most common flaws we find in hotel networks set up by people who treat a hotel like a large office.
Buildings that do not collaborate. Nesta zona de Lisboa trabalha‑se sobre edifícios antigos, muitos deles com restrições de intervenção. Não há espaço para passar cabo onde apetece nem para colocar equipamento à vista. O projeto tem de resolver a cobertura com o edifício que existe, não com o edifício que seria conveniente.
Video surveillance and CCTV over the same network, securely
A videovigilância destes hotéis corre sobre a mesma infraestrutura física da restante rede, mas numa rede lógica própria. Essa decisão poupa uma cablagem paralela e, mais importante, deixa as câmaras fora do alcance de quem quer que se ligue ao Wi‑Fi de hóspedes.
In practice, this means: IP cameras on a dedicated network, a recorder with a capacity calculated for the agreed retention period, user access with a log of who viewed what, and signage and image processing policies aligned with the GDPR. A poorly segmented CCTV system is both a security risk and a regulatory offence risk — and in a hotel, both things are expensive.
PMS, Microsoft 365 and day-to-day operations
Um hotel para quando o PMS para. Não há check‑in, não há faturação, não há atribuição de quartos — e há uma fila na receção. Por isso o sistema de gestão hoteleira não é tratado como mais uma aplicação: tem rede própria, prioridade, e é dos primeiros pontos a ser verificado em qualquer intervenção.
Next to him, the Microsoft 365 take care of the rest: reservations and management mail, shared files between shifts, accounts created and closed with the normal rotation of a hospitality team. It is unglamorous work and it is where half of any company's security incidents lie — an account of a former employee left open is worth more to an attacker than any misconfigured firewall.
Alarm monitoring and permanent support
Installation is the beginning, not the end. All these hotels are in IT Unlimited, DataRoad's contract regime: support without hour counting, with written response times and permanent infrastructure monitoring.
Alarm monitoring is the part that clients end up valuing the most and expecting the least: switches, firewalls, access points, recorders, and circuits are under continuous surveillance, and the alert reaches the DataRoad team the moment something is out of the ordinary. In a significant number of occurrences, the problem is dealt with before reception even notices. In a hotel, where an incident happens at three in the morning with reception on its own, it is the difference between an internal log and a public complaint.
Case by case, hotel by hotel
Each unit has its own technical history, and several are documented in detail:
Ouro Rossio Hotel — fully-covering wireless network, CCTV, firewall and server infrastructure, with ongoing support.
LX Arch Rossio Hotel — rede com Wi‑Fi 7, firewall e videovigilância.
Rossio Plaza Hotel — corporate IT network from scratch.
Nicola Rossio Hotel — network, firewall and gateway for IT Unlimited support.
BePoet Hotel — full IT area, from cabling to support.
O BeHotel integra o mesmo conjunto, com o mesmo âmbito de rede, Wi‑Fi de hóspedes, segurança, videovigilância e suporte.
Why concentration in one area is worth money
Ter seis clientes hoteleiros no mesmo quarteirão não é apenas uma coincidência simpática. Traduz‑se em vantagens reais para cada um deles:
Rapid on-site presence. When it's necessary to go there — and sometimes it is — the technician is at the door in minutes, not hours. Travel time is no longer the factor that defines resolution time.
Common technical standard. Equipment from the same family, configurations with the same logic and uniform documentation. Any technician on the team can walk into any of the hotels and know where everything is, without depending on who did the installation.
Parts and replacement. Um switch ou um ponto de acesso avariado substitui‑se por equipamento equivalente, já conhecido e já testado, sem esperar por uma encomenda.
Learning that passes from hotel to hotel. O que se aprendeu a resolver num edifício antigo do Rossio aplica‑se no seguinte. Cada projeto entra melhor desenhado do que o anterior.
É esta a proposta da DataRoad para hotelaria: não vender caixas, mas assumir a infraestrutura inteira — desenhá‑la, instalá‑la, vigiá‑la e responder por ela — para que a direção do hotel possa tratar de hotelaria em vez de tratar de informática.
