Social Intranet for more than 6,000 hotel employees

To communicate with local staff, Best Western Hotels Central Europe has used an intranet so far, and its capabilities have continued to expand over a 12-year period. As part of a restructuring, the underlying infrastructure should be modernized and complemented with new functions. In addition, all information should be made available in multiple languages in the future. After a comprehensive comparison of providers, the Web experts from Best Western decided to relaunch the intranet with the CMS CONTENS.

With clear ideas on the desired result, the project participants of Best Western in cooperation with CONTENS Professional Services defined the essential requirements: the existing backend systems should continue to be available, professional exchange among employees should be simplified, a quick search should facilitate access to the content and all content should be available in German and English.

Employees in the hotels create their own profile in the new bwnet and select areas of activity in which they are employed, e.g. Purchasing, service or tourism. Via the personalized start page you will receive suitable information for your activity. The navigation depends on the individual authorization and only includes what is relevant for the individual employee.

To improve cooperation, content such as news can be commented on, marked as "Like" and recommended to other users. In groups that can be created hotel-specific or company-wide, topics can be discussed and worked on together. In the "Inspiriations" section, employees can provide photos and descriptions of successful events that serve as a valuable stimulus to employees in other hotels. Inspirations can be filtered by topic, sorted by relevance or popularity. Sharing good ideas that can be implemented in other Best Western hotels strengthens collaboration and promotes the success of individual hotels.

• Bilingual social intranet in German, English for more than 6,000 hotel employees
• Responsive design for mobile devices
• Editorial content and user-generated content
• "Inspirations" for sharing good ideas across the hotels
• Interfaces and single sign-on for hotel database, image database Canto Cumulus, print-on demand applications and other applications
• Employee profiles
• Personalized content and navigation
• Social features like commenting, sharing and liking
• Hotel-related and company-wide groups for cooperation