{"id":1068,"date":"2026-02-04T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-04T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sbit.twelvetwentystage.com\/borealis-hotel-group-case-study-2\/"},"modified":"2026-08-06T20:35:49","modified_gmt":"2026-08-06T18:35:49","slug":"stayokay-case-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sbit.twelvetwentystage.com\/stayokay-case-study\/","title":{"rendered":"Twenty two hostels. One small IT team. One Azure foundation, monitored around the clock."},"content":{"rendered":"
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Chapter 01 \u00b7 The situation<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

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Twenty two properties. One IT function that has to feel like enterprise.<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Stayokay has been part of the Dutch hospitality landscape since 1929. Twenty two hostels today, spread across the country from Amsterdam to Terschelling, from Maastricht to Egmond. Over a thousand guest beds. A recognisable brand rooted in accessibility. And a guest expectation that has not stayed still: connectivity that carries digital check in, point of sale that responds instantly, back office systems that never make the receptionist apologise. Enterprise expectations, running under a lean cost structure.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

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The infrastructure that supports twenty two properties has to feel like it belongs to a much larger group. The IT function that owns it does not have to be much larger. The trick is engineering that difference.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/blockquote>\n\n\n

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Every hostel needs the same operational baseline: network, firewalls, endpoint infrastructure, backup, security posture. Doing that with a dedicated IT team per property would cost more than the hostel margins allow. Doing it centrally, on premise, would mean a data centre and staff Stayokay does not need for anything else. The answer is neither of those. The answer is a central Azure architecture, managed as a discipline, with a small internal team that stays close to the business and a partner that runs the operational layer twenty four hours a day.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

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What makes the Stayokay infrastructure challenge specific<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Every property runs the same operational baseline, but each one has its own physical context. A city hostel in Amsterdam Vondelpark handles a different guest density than a coastal property on Terschelling. The infrastructure has to behave the same regardless. Continuity between them, and consistency inside each, is what the internal team was hired to protect. Sbit’s role is to make that possible without asking the internal team to become the operations team as well.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

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Chapter 02 \u00b7 The Azure foundation<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

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One cloud architecture. Every property connected. Every layer accountable.<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n\n
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The infrastructure Stayokay runs on today is Azure at the centre and property equipment as the extension. Not a hybrid environment stitched from legacy systems and cloud add ons. A cloud native architecture designed by Sbit, deployed by Sbit, and maintained by Sbit as one continuous operational discipline. Every property inherits the same baseline. Every service inherits the same security posture. Every change flows through the same governance.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

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The four operational layers of the Stayokay infrastructure<\/h3>\n
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Central Azure architecture<\/h4>\n

Identity, applications, group services and financial systems consolidated in one cloud tenant. Governance, cost control, capacity planning and lifecycle management running as one operational discipline. The environment scales up or down against the operational calendar, not against a fixed on premise footprint.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/div>\n

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Property connectivity as extension<\/h4>\n

Every hostel connects into the central architecture through the same secure network baseline. Local hardware \u2014 network, firewalls, endpoints \u2014 is treated as an extension of the central platform, not as a separate operational island. Twenty two properties, one operating model.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/div>\n

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Backup, continuity and disaster recovery<\/h4>\n

Backup and DR are architected into the platform, not added afterwards. Continuity is measured on the properties that actually rely on it, and restore paths are tested rather than assumed. When something needs to come back online, the time to recovery is a number, not a promise.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/div>\n

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Security posture as a platform layer<\/h4>\n

Endpoint protection, identity controls, threat monitoring and compliance reporting are woven into the Azure baseline itself. New properties inherit the security posture automatically. Audit dossiers are maintained continuously, so NIS2 and GDPR conversations happen from a position of readiness, not preparation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

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Together these four layers form the operational foundation Stayokay’s small IT team could not have built and maintained alone. Not because the team lacks skill. The opposite, they are specialised where it matters most, but because architecture at this scope is a different discipline than the strategic work the internal team was hired to do.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

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Chapter 03 \u00b7 Monitoring and support<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

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Watching before anyone has to look. Answering when hospitality actually runs.<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n\n
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A cloud architecture is only as good as the operational discipline running underneath it. For Stayokay, that discipline splits into two halves that reinforce each other: continuous monitoring that catches problems before users notice them, and support hours that match how hospitality actually operates.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

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Monitoring as a proactive layer, not a reactive one<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Sbit’s operations team watches the environment continuously across every property. Alerts are calibrated to catch degradation early, not just outages. When a firewall in Rotterdam starts logging unusual traffic patterns at 04:30, the ticket exists before the first guest complaint would have surfaced. When a backup fails silently, the operations team knows within the hour. Most incidents are quiet by the time the internal team hears about them, if they hear about them at all.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

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Support when the hospitality day is longest<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n\n
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The traditional office IT support model runs from nine to five on weekdays. That model does not work for hospitality. A hostel does not empty out at 17:00, and a Friday evening at check in is when infrastructure is being asked to do its hardest work. Sbit’s support model runs against the operational reality of the properties, which means available in the evenings and weekends, not just when the office is open. That is a direct requirement of how hospitality actually operates, and it is a direct pillar of the engagement.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

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The internal team stays close to the business<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Stayokay’s IT function is deliberately small and deliberately specialised. Their people spend time on strategy, financial systems, integrations with reservation and booking flows, and the parts of the environment that reward business proximity. The parts that reward operational scale: monitoring, patching, incident handling and security operations, sit with Sbit. Both teams see the same information, use the same tools, and speak into the same operational picture.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

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Change discipline that respects the operation<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Every change flows through a defined path. Impact is assessed before, execution is timed to the operational calendar, and validation happens after. New property openings, system upgrades and integrations land without discovery moments in production. This is not exciting. It is precisely what a lean internal team wants from an infrastructure partner.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

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Chapter 04 \u00b7 What that delivers<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

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Outcomes across four audiences.<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n\n
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An infrastructure layer engineered this way produces different outcomes for different people looking at it. For Stayokay, all four line up with the reason the engagement exists in the first place.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

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Four audiences, four outcomes<\/h3>\n
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Guests at every property<\/h4>\n

Check in that does not stall. Point of sale that responds instantly. Reservation, booking and back office systems that behave the same in every hostel. The parts of the infrastructure that guests never see – until they don’t work – stay invisible, which is the point.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/div>\n

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The internal IT function<\/h4>\n

Peter Verdoold’s team stays close to the business. Strategy, financial systems, integrations – the work that rewards internal knowledge. The operational grind of running twenty two properties sits with Sbit, in the same tools, with the same visibility.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/div>\n

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Property managers<\/h4>\n

No local IT firefighting. No cluster of workarounds. When something breaks, one escalation line handles it. When it is fixed, the fix stays fixed because the change discipline is a platform habit, not a case by case decision.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/div>\n

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Finance and the board<\/h4>\n

Predictable monthly infrastructure costs, scaling per property rather than in step functions. NIS2 board level responsibility supported by documented, auditable platform controls. Continuity engineered in, not bolted on. A capital footprint that stays proportional to the property portfolio.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

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Chapter 05 \u00b7 The partnership<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

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The layer around, not the layer instead.<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Every long infrastructure partnership eventually gets a shorthand from the client side about what the vendor actually is. Most of that shorthand ends up sounding transactional. Sometimes something more specific comes out, and it tells you what the working relationship actually is.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

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The line that matters, from the person accountable for finance and IT at Stayokay, is that Sbit is not a replacement for their internal team. Sbit is the layer around it. Available in the evenings, strong where the internal team is thin, and fully integrated into how Stayokay works. That framing does not describe an SLA. It describes a working relationship in which the vendor’s engineers know that a Friday evening infrastructure failure at a busy hostel matters differently than a mid morning one at an office, and staff accordingly.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

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Stayokay has been running its hostel network for nearly a century. The Azure foundation Sbit runs today is what carries the next chapter of that operation: more digital, more automated, more measured. Same principle underneath. Small internal team, close to the business. Broad operational layer, engineered to make them stronger.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How Stayokay runs twenty two hostels on one Azure foundation, monitored around the clock by a managed infrastructure partner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[14],"class_list":["post-1068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-case-studies"],"acf":{"post_subtitle":"Case Study \u00b7 Managed Infrastructure","post_title":"Twenty two hostels. One small IT team. One Azure foundation, monitored around the clock.","post_title_highlight":"Twenty two hostels. 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