HD Hospitality

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The Grand Hyatt New York has recently embarked on a major DS installation, to inform and welcome guests.
 
The luxury hotel is located in the fashionable East Side of midtown Manhattan. It is only steps away from the city's top attractions, Grand Central Terminal, Times Square, Broadway theatres, Central Park and Fifth Avenue's world-class shopping, as well as an array of global corporate headquarters. The hotel boasts luxurious accommodation, outstanding dining and catering services, beautiful guestrooms and newly renovated event spaces. With their broad range of service offerings and prime downtown location, they have secured their position as one of Manhattan's premier hotel destinations.
 
Project Scope
 
The Grand Hyatt New York's facility accommodates both business and leisure travelers with a total of 1300 guest rooms and 55,000 square feet of event space. The event space, which recently underwent extensive renovations, is used to host a number of conferences, meetings and corporate events. Given the high volume of traffic, the hotel sought a solution that would simplify facility navigation while improving the overall hospitality experience for their guests. To help them achieve their goals, they turned to system integrator AVT Communiqué, a company which specialises in digital signage for hotels.
 
To be successful, the new signage had to address a variety of technical requirements as well as integrate with the multi-use spaces. The hotel wanted to be able to display unique content on specific screens in a timely and efficient manner. This content ranged from meeting room schedules and wayfinding, to advertisements and corporate branding. After careful evaluation and on the advice of AVT Communiqué, the Grand Hyatt New York selected Omnivex as their digital signage software provider. In addition to its graphical capabilities, the software could interface with the data in the hotel's existing scheduling system, Daylight, and subsequently automate the process of updating the content being displayed on the digital signage throughout the hotel.
 
The Solution

 
The entire hotel has been equipped with 40” LCD screens, which have been placed at high traffic areas to help guests navigate the facility, provide them with information and promote the Hyatt brand. Content includes real-time news and weather, in-house services, conference details, event scheduling and wayfinding.
 
The screens also provide a medium for Hyatt-specific advertising content; no external content that is unrelated to the Hyatt and its services is displayed on the screens. The hotel solely promotes in-house restaurants and services, as well as the Hyatt Gold Passport membership program.
 
The goal was to keep the advertising specific to Hyatt service offerings and avoid saturating visitors with unnecessary or irrelevant promotional content.
 
The software providers intended their system to be easy to use, giving the hotel all of the functionality they required with minimal additional effort to manage the digital signage. The software offers the ability to make manual changes at the user's discretion. Developers say it also makes automation simple, which is particularly useful if there is an existing system already in place, as was the case at the Grand Hyatt. . The hotel has made excellent use of automation in order to minimise manpower and drive efficiency.
 
Unique content is delivered to screens throughout the building based on the relevance of that information at a particular location. For instance, one player PC is connected to an in-house channel that supplies content for every guest room in the hotel. This functionality provides a high degree of scheduling flexibility and content customisation. The entire digital signage system is managed remotely by the systems integrator while staff at the Grand Hyatt NY can add or make changes to content by way of advanced user permissioning built into the solution.
 
An important factor in the installation of the screens was that the hotel wanted them to become part of the environment, so that the signage would complement the look and feel of the establishment. The majority of screens located throughout the facility are contained in custom enclosures, which are built to integrate into the architecture and existing décor of the hotel. For instance, large vertical LCD screens, built into custom monoliths, are positioned in highly visible locations and are used to display wayfinding, real-time news, weather updates, conference schedules and event information, corporate branding and other hotel messaging.
 
On the Executive Suite Level of the hotel, screens showcase upcoming meetings and events and give detailed instructions about how to get to them. On the Conference Level, four 40” LCD display matrices were incorporated into the recently completed renovations. The screens, which are suspended over the main floor, provide a variety of content, such as information about in-house restaurants, hotel services, promotions and facility navigation. By making the hotel floor plan clearly visible to guests, the screens help to guide them to their desired meeting rooms quickly and easily.
 
Additionally, software is used to manage real time meeting room scheduling, which is displayed on screens located outside of each meeting and conference room. There are approximately twenty 15” LCD panels showcasing meeting room content throughout the hotel. The software automatically pulls this information directly from the hotel's existing schedules that they use to manage the room bookings. This functionality adds a high degree of relevance to the content being displayed, making it more useful for hotel guests.
 
"The guest experience is our top priority and the digital signage system puts Grand Hyatt New York a notch above competing luxury hotels," said Thomas Beatty, senior director of convention services for the Grand Hyatt New York. "This technology helps our facilities stand out as exceptional."
 
The Results

 
The Grand Hyatt New York believes that it has succeeded in providing its guests with an improved customer experience, by implementing the latest in digital signage technology. They say that now, managing content, posting changes and informing visitors is simple and efficient and requires little additional labour on the part of staff.
 
Given the success of the initial digital signage installation, there is discussion about expanding the network and exploring new ways that the signage can be utilised. This deployment represents a stepping stone in exploring the many applications of digital signage at the Grand Hyatt. Guest communications have improved significantly since the installation of the system, but there are still other avenues for digital signage within the hotel that show promise.
 
"The Omnivex-powered digital signage system has been running at the Grand Hyatt New York for over two years now with impressive results," commented David Alter, Director of Engineering & Project Management for AVT Communiqué, which oversees the system. He continued, "Omnivex gives us the capability to stretch functionality in new ways and provide great value to guests at the hotel."
 
Digital signage in the hospitality sector is growing in popularity, mainly due to its ability to provide guests with an improved customer experience. Competition amongst the hospitality industry is high, so hotels are looking for ways to set themselves apart.
 
"While the Grand Hyatt is starting off with enhancing the guest experience, digital signage software will eventually be used by hotels and other hospitality sectors to help their staff and suppliers make decisions," forecasts Jeff Collard, president, Omnivex. "Internal operations can be made more efficient when intelligent content is used to help link information with the people who need it. For example, screens placed on the carts of the housekeeping staff can provide them with real time information about which rooms are booked, cleaned or occupied, which can reduce business operations costs significantly."