Luxury hotel and leisure group De Vere has signed a £1.7m networking deal as part of a project to centralse its IT systems.

Using a multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) network from supplier Vanco, the owner of The Belfry will be able to centrally host business applications, reducing IT deployment and maintenance costs.

Some 33 hotels, 41 health and fitness clubs and 109 five-star lodges will be linked by the MPLS network, allowing staff to access data, email, conference booking systems, reservation and property management systems hosted at its headquarters.

'We took the decision to adopt thin client technology so that we could move towards a "hotel in a box" approach,' said Ed Sygrove, director of IT at De Vere Group. 'By doing this we will be able to deliver the vast majority of applications down the wire.'

De Vere's group-wide reservation system will be transferred to the MPLS network this month, with content management and other applications switching shortly.

The new network will deliver for times more bandwidth than the present network.

Existing ADSL technology will be used at its' less bandwidth reliant' Greens health and fitness chain. It will also be used to strengthen critical business data and customer reservation back-ups.

Voice over IP is also being trialled using the Vanco network at two of De Vere's newest Village hotels in Maidestone and Walsall.

'We're running Cisco IP telephony over the network and have our eyes on more IP telephony going forward,' said Sygrove.

De Vere's IT team worked with HP Professional Services last year to develop an IT strategy to move to the new system and ensure it will be resilient enough to support the hotel chain?s future growth plans.

HP EVA storage area network systems and application servers are being linked up to deliver applications over the MPLS network to hotels and other De Vere premises.

The deal builds on a previous £1.1 million contract signed with Vanco in spring 2003 to provide broadband.