Reliable hosting solution guarantees round-the-clock website availability

In 2007 Scandic became responsible for maintaining and managing their own websites and wanted a hosting solution that would be wholly reliable, resilient and scalable.

"As our website is one of our most important business channels we need to be assured of the maximum uptime and availability possible. We are seeing huge growth rates year-on-year in Internet bookings and need to ensure that our customers will keep returning to the site to make their reservations." Says Elin Sjodin.

Checking in

Scandic has 152 hotels across the Nordic region and Northern Europe, and over the next few years its expansion plans will include Scandinavia, Northern and Eastern Europe and Russia. Today there is one website, localised in five languages, Swedish, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian and English.

From 2001, as part of the Hilton Group, the website and online booking for the hotels were managed under the Hilton Brand. In 2007 EQT bought out Scandic as one entity which meant building a separate website and hosting solution.

Scandic deployed EPiServer CMS for their websites. Integrated with a powerful booking engine, where cusotmers can book their rooms with just three clicks, the site has enjoyed exponential growth in the numbers of unique visitors coming to it. Customer loyalty is also an important objective, members of the frequent guest program can log in and view their points balance, make a reservation with points earned as well as report missing scores. Overall, conversion rates are up and as the hotel chain expands its presence in North and Eastern Europe, new websites will be launched for Poland and Estonia.

Good cooperation with the Everweb team and their partner

With the websites run on EPiServer CMS it made obvious sense to have it hosted on EPiServer Everweb hosting center. "We needed a solution that could offer the highest availability and resilience for us as we have hundreds of thousands unique visitors coming to our website each month," says Elin Sjödin. "This summer the average figures of numbers visiting the site grew to over a million".

"We work directly with the EPiServer Everweb team, although we use our partner for any web development and booking process optimization, and they are always available and give us a very high level of service," comments Elin. The EPiServer Everweb team work alongside EPiServer development teams and are ideally placed to learn about updates and upgrades to the platforms. "All members of the Everweb team are always accomodating, professional and eager to help", adds Elin. "It's a great advantage that they have in-depth knowledge of EPiServer platforms, as if ever an issue should arise they'll know where to look to solve it".