AV and ICT systems are brought together by SmarTone Solutions and Comm-Tec to create a guest and inroom experience that is not only seamless for the user but also positively impacts the bottom line of the operator at Alva Hotel, Hong Kong.
In our recent exploration of the hospitality sector in Asia Pacific, two trends shaping the market were evident. Firstly, hotel operators are turning their attention to
the guests and any investment
in technology must demonstrate
perceptible value. Secondly, AV
and IT are coming together to
create a new breed of technology
systems for hotels which can
deliver the outcomes operators
require.
With these two trends as a
frame of reference, it is easy
to contextualise the direction
of Alva Hotel in Hong Kong.
SmarTone Solutions was engaged
to provide a turnkey solution,
serving as the consultant,
primary contractor and software
developer, to create a modern
hotel facility. Comm-Tec Asia
played a supporting role, lending
its expertise to help design and
provide AV technology systems
for the project.
Daniel Leung, general
manager for enterprise solution
development, products and
services division at SmarTone
Solutions, talks about the
beginning phase of the Alva
Hotel project: “The brief from
the client was two-fold. First was
the user experience and second
was productivity especially
within the context of the service
provided at the front desk.
Guests don’t like to queue or
wait in line to get to their rooms.
Alva Hotel has six counters in
the lobby and that is really good
capacity to ensure that guest
bookings can be verified, and
they can be checked-in in a
quick manner. But they wanted
to improve this even further.”
He continues: “In relation to
the user experience, Alva Hotel
wanted to completely change the
in-room experience of the guests
with screen mirroring and
casting. The trend among
consumers right now is that they
like to view their own content,
be it from YouTube or any other
streaming platform. Taking this
into account, allowing the users
to view their content on the
in-room TV was very important
for the hotel.”
Checking in
SmarTone Solutions proposed
and deployed its Cross Channel
Customer Engagement Layer
[XCCEL] at the Alva Hotel to
help it achieve its aims with
respect to the guest experience.
XCCEL is an integrated digital
channel platform with systems
such as hotel management, door
key management, self-service
check-in and more.
Leung from SmarTone
Solutions provides further details:
“We’ve built a platform that
allows guests at the Alva Hotel to
have a completely streamlined
experience through an app that
can be installed on their smart
device. This app allows you to
check in or check-out and access
all the services available at the
hotel. It allows you to turn your
mobile phone into the key for your
room, you can use it to activate
the elevators and much more.
From the user perspective, they
can do everything by themselves.”
XCCEL completely changes
the way guests experience the
environment at Alva Hotel and
Leung says: “The hospitality
industry represents one of
these economic sectors which
takes increasingly intensive
advantage of the available ICT
systems. ICT plays a specific
role and is regarded as the key
factor for adding intelligence to
a hotel’s effective functioning.
These ICT systems not only
allow improved management
and higher efficiency, but also
facilitate achieving high service
levels which can result in
much better satisfaction of
demanding guests.”
In-room experience
XCCEL also impacts the in-room
experience as Leung details:
“The in-room guest experience
has been automated. With the
app users can control the TV,
select the channels, mirror
their device or cast from it and
even access services such as
housekeeping. The guests don’t
really have to call the operator
anymore as all the services can
just be accessed from the app.
All of this is made possible with
the cross channel customer
engagement layer that we have
developed which links with all
he other systems via APIs and
has an intuitive GUI.”
But the real wizardry in the
rooms at Alva Hotel is the IPTV
system. Magnus Lam from
Comm-Tec Asia details: “We
selected ZeeVee as the IPTV
headend and Exterity IPTV
server is used for distribution.
The content signals are received
via satellite and received by the
ZeeVee headend. ZeeVee then
converts the signal to IP and it is
passed along to the Exterity
servers and distributed to the
Sony TVs in the hotel rooms.
The unique thing about the
IPTV system at the Alva Hotel is
that there are no set-top boxes in
the rooms, we use the built-in
media players in the Sony TVs
along with the robust IPTV
system that has been deployed.”
The products deployed were
selected to ensure the best
possible outcome for Alva Hotel.
Chris Yang, managing director
at Comm-Tec Asia says: “ZeeVee
was crucial for the IPTV system.
We are using the ZeeVee HD
Bridge and it is a card-cage unit.
With regards to expansion, we
can just add cards in to support
more channels and expand the
system. It not only provides
mission critical service but also
the flexibility to upscale. The
decision to go with a cage-based
system meant that we could
avoid having just boxes and
boxes in the headend. Not
having a set-top box in the
rooms is also very unique. The
set-top box is an additional point
of failure in the overall system
and SmarTone Solutions’
proposition to the hotel operator
meant that there is no need for
additional power supply and an additional point of failure and that appealed to the client.”
Leung from SmarTone Solutions adds: “ZeeVee was
able to provide a cost-effective and large capacity headend system. This is becoming more important in hospitality because of the change in consumer behaviour where guests want
to be able to access their own content which means that hotels are no longer willing to invest heavily for in-room content systems. But at the same time, TV is almost a mandatory service in hotels. So, we have to explore technology that is cost-effective and easily expandable.”
HDCP compliance and content protection was a requirement and both ZeeVee and Exterity products provided this. IPTV signals are distributed via Cat cabling and four Netgear multicast IP switches.
Lam from Comm-Tec Asia explains the qualitative impact that the designed IPTV had: “There are approximately 600 rooms at Alva Hotel, which means that 600 set-top boxes have been replaced with just four Netgear multicast IP switches and the Exterity distribution system. This offers significant cost savings to the hotel.”
The decision to create the in-room experience Alva
Hotel desired came with new challenges for the integrator but these were overcome
with teamwork. Leung from SmarTone Solutions says:
“With the mirroring and casting features we implemented, we needed a good UX to ensure that the guests would be able to use it. On the other hand, we also had to protect and ensure the security of the content that is being cast. Not compromising the UX and the security meant
that we had to implement special network segmentation. But this arrangement together with IP multicast meant that the complication of the network design increased. Fortunately, we had a good partner in the form of Comm-Tec and they were able to provide us a
good design for the network infrastructure to provide IPTV services together with mirroring and casting and a very simple way for guests to use it in a
very simple manner that does not require any complicated procedures to access it.”
AV technology has also been deployed in other spaces of Alva Hotel as Leung from SmarTone Solutions says: “Alva Hotel seeks to cater to young professionals which is why it has invested in its facilities such as the digital gym. It features a videowall and a 5.1 speaker system. The Crestron DM ensures that different content sources and IPTV can
be delivered to the videowall. We use a Hall Research audio de-embedder to strip the audio signal from HDMI after which it is fed to an Extron processor and then sent to QSC speakers to ensure quality audio.”
The 3 x 3 videowall comprises Samsung UM55H-E flat panels. As Leung mentions, a Crestron 4K Digital Media presentation system is used to manage the video and content sources. Audio is provided by QSC KS series speakers and subwoofer with a QSC Core110f DSP, Extron Sound Processor SSP7.1 and Hall Research EMX-HD-AUD unit working in the backend.
Regarding the challenges faced during the course of the project, Leung from SmarTone Solutions says: “Managing the project was the biggest challenge. We have
a good relationship with the customer but as the project
progressed the requirements changed as well. As the prime contractor, we had to expand the scope of our involvement to make sure that the project was completed on time.”
He adds: “The technology and the products that we are using might be very mature, but integrating it together is something different. There are always complications that we have not foreseen that arise during the implementation and it is our job to put the whole system together.”
Yang from Comm-Tec says: “We were working with a lot of different brands and we had to smoothly deploy approximately 600 rooms. We had to get the Netgear switches working, deliver mirroring for the in-room TVs and one of the challenges was the installation time we were given. Luckily, we had support from the suppliers, especially from Exterity and ZeeVee.
This meant we could do quick turnaround for any changes
and we were able to resolve
all issues.”
Leung from SmarTone Solutions believes that the future of hospitality is interconnected. He concludes: “I’m currently drafting the roadmap for the future of our smart hotel solutions. There are three major trends influencing the market. First is IoT which is a mature technology now, with the additional of sensors anything can be turned into a digital endpoint. Second is 5G which be an important addition to hotel infrastructure allowing guests
to access more robust wireless networks and thus allowing us to do more with apps. Lastly, we will need data analytics to be able to understand how guests are using the technology so that hotels
can explore additional revenue streams.”