The UK's premier hotel and conference venue, Sofitel London Heathrow on Terminal 5, is using Saturn Communication's Connectvision to present a highly customised and branded digital signage environment for visitors and delegates.
The largest hotel to be built inside the M25 before the 2012 Olympics, the Sofitel London Heathrow offers 605 luxury bedrooms and suites plus an extensive range of meeting rooms including the Arora Suite which can hold up to 1700 guests and 117-tiered seat theatre within a dedicated conference centre. Food and beverage offerings include, celebrity chef Albert Roux’s Brasserie Roux and Tea 5 the tea salon. The hotel also boasts a luxury spa and gym facilities. The hotel has installed over 100 LCD screens ranging from small LCDs in the hotel lifts to mid-sized screens outside meeting rooms, and in the gym and toilets. Larger screens feature in the link bridge between Terminal 5 and the hotel conference reception area and meeting rooms.
“We use a mix of hard and digital signage which allows us to offer more interactive signage that can be changed in line with hotel and guest requirements. Our selection criteria for the digital signage was that it should be readily integrated with our conference diary system, be easy-to-use and have excellent support – Connectvision delivers all three,” said the IT Director, Arora International Hotels Ltd.
Connectvision is centrally managed within the hotel's sales and marketing business. Screen content is zoned and scheduled to create a completely integrated communications environment, covering everything from news media through to event and meeting scheduling and corporate branding as well as wayfinding.
Connectvision is fully integrated within the hotel's Delphi Meetings and Events Management System, enabling Sofitel London Heathrow staff to offer companies the opportunity to use Connectvision's scheduling and zoning features to its full extent. For a large conference where the entire meetings and events centre is used, Connectvision can be used to create an ambiance for the conference which would be impossible without the digital signage.
“Our corporate clients have been delighted with the ability to create a complete conference branding environment by using the screens to show either a single message or multiple messages and visual imagery. We offer them the opportunity to include logos, JPEG images, video clips on the large screens and logos on the smaller meeting room screens,” noted the Sales and Marketing Director, Sofitel London Heathrow.
As delegates enter the dedicated conference centre entrance they can instantly see details of their meeting and events on overhead LCD screens in the reception area. Moving into the conference centre they are met by a Connectvision-powered wayfinding screen indicating how they can get to their meeting room. Adjacent to the entrance door for each of the 45 meeting rooms is a digital screen giving details of the company, meeting topic and start – end times.
Sofitel is now exploring opportunities for advertising particularly on the link bridge concourse screens so as guests leave the hotel they will be able to see advertising for retailers within Terminal 5. The Sales and Marketing Director said, “Connectvision is a fantastic system. Until now we hadn't seen digital signage as a potential revenue stream but Connectvision makes this possible. In addition to Terminal 5 retailers and BAA, we're also looking at opportunities for our café, shop and restaurant colleagues here at Heathrow and other Sofitel hotels around the world.”