In recent years, the rise of budget airlines, increased international focus and a growing middle class in Asia have all contributed to ever-growing demand for hotel rooms across the region. According to reports from the United Nations, World Trade Organization and Intercontinental Hotel Groups, China alone is estimated to have 6.1 million hotel rooms by 2025. With greater demand and numbers of affluent travelers, hotel security is fast becoming an important differentiating factor.
In recent years, the rise of budget airlines, increased international focus and a growing middle class in Asia have all contributed to ever-growing demand for hotel rooms across the region. According to reports from the United Nations, World Trade Organization and Intercontinental Hotel Groups, China alone is estimated to have 6.1 million hotel rooms by 2025. With greater demand and numbers of affluent travelers, hotel security is fast becoming an important differentiating factor.
In recent years, the rise of budget airlines, increased international focus and a growing middle class in Asia have all contributed to ever-growing demand for hotel rooms across the region. According to reports from the United Nations, World Trade Organization and Intercontinental Hotel Groups, China alone is estimated to have 6.1 million hotel rooms by 2025. With greater demand and numbers of affluent travelers, hotel security is fast becoming an important differentiating factor.
In addition to comfort, aesthetics and prestige, hotel guests are increasingly more concerned with theft, privacy and personal safety when staying at a hotel. That is why when our China operations — ASG (Shanghai) — was engaged to design and provide security solutions for Lushang Hyatt Regency Qingdao, we were careful to take details into considerations, especially given the fact that it is the first 5-star waterfront hotel in northern China, ideally perched on the famous Shi Lao Ren beach.
Surveillance Deployment
As the hotel is right by the ocean, there was concern with early corrosion for electronics, especially those deployed outdoors. IP66-rated enclosures were selected to fit into the aesthetics of the hotel while ensuring good protection for the cameras. Lighting was another big challenge. The outdoor cameras are exposed to natural light reflections or direct sunlight during the day and low light at night. Too often, solution providers recommend cameras based on paper specifications, which can have very different results in actual implementation. Instead, we tested several low-light cameras to get the right combinations of cameras and lenses for the best result in each location.
Indoor conditions can also change from time to time, as there is a mixture of strong, dim and effects lighting that could affect camera performance. To make it even more dynamic and challenging are the flooring and walls, which may have reflective surfaces.
We selected a combination of WDR cameras with appropriate lenses to ensure best possible results. The right location and outlook of these cameras were another deciding factor; equipment placement should never be intrusive, especially in areas where some privacy is preferred, such as dining areas, elevators and corridors along guest floors. Concealed cameras with 720p resolution and H.264 high-resolution DVRs were thus chosen.
Sustainable Design
In the client's experience and past implementations, inability to upgrade and scale out due to limitations of older technologies was a key source of frustration. The entire security management system was therefore purpose-built to be fully IP-based, and allows for easier troubleshooting and future expansions. With respect to recording capacity, an intelligent, network-based recording array was put in place to all for new hard disks or hot swaps without having to reboot the system.
Should the network suffer a breakdown, all the intelligent edge devices with distributed intelligence on-site will have localized commands and continue to function.
Intelligent & Human-Centric
Oftentimes, sophisticated systems are just put in place without understanding how operators will use them. In this case, we took the time to fully understand their day-to-day tasks and configured the system to fit those purposes. For example; the system has an advanced digital matrix interface that allows operators to easily switch and search for videos on large displays. Every alarm and incident are categorized according to predefined protocols, with integrated video pop-ups to show actual site information. Alarms of the highest priority are always put on large screens so they can be attended to quickly.
Digital maps were set up to replace the old text-based GUI. This enables quicker situational awareness. Instead of forcing the operators to use a mouse to operate the surveillance system, digital joysticks are provided.
The hotel industry, just like any other industry, faces its own set of business priorities and security challenges. The key to successful solution implementation is good initial design, and good design can only come from comprehensive understanding of the client's business concerns. The Lushang Hyatt Regency Qingdao case was one such example that upholds the privacy of guests, improves system uptime and maintenance, and renders the whole security and general operations to be more productive.