SPECIAL FEATURESystems Integration Asia October - November 201558

The Nuts And Bolts Of Hospitality AVA Review by Ian D. Harris, C.Eng, Bsc. Eng (Hons), MIET, CTS-D, ihD Principal Consultant, Managing Director

Ian Harris

Hospitality encompasses many things, since it means basically looking after people, but this article focusses on Five-Star Hotels since these encompass much that the Hospitality Industry has to offer. The content is Internationally-applicable since the practices described are carried out in most countries, albeit with local flavours of some products, but even in the frozen corners of North-Eastern China, American AV equipment is to be found, and in the depths of New Jersey, English equipment.

The ChallengesDesign of AV for an environment where the users (guests) change almost daily, where the next chance to upgrade will be in 7-10 years, where the systems must operate pretty much 24/7 and where the Operator is focussed on Hospitality and not on AV (ie the systems need to

be very very automated and intuitive) presents some challenges technically. But there are unseen challenges too, making it even more interesting and satisfying to run these projects.

Most Hotels are constructed and funded not by the Operators (Hyatt, Shangri-La, Hilton and so on), but by Property Investors, and various other Business Entities. The Operators operate the resulting Hotels under a profit-sharing arrangement with the Owner. But the Owner signs a Contract with the Operator at the outset, agreeing to a set of detailed Design Specifications which will create uniform Hotels of the particular brand around the world.

Most Hotel Groups mandate a Design Team comprising expert Designers in

their own technical fields – Architecture, Interior Design, Lighting Design, Mechanical & Electrical Systems, Acoustics, Signage, Audio-Visual – but also expert and proven-experienced in designing Hotels for that Hotel Group. The Owner/Investor must employ these, who will design, tender, oversee the Installation, and finally carry out Testing and Commissioning of their Designed Systems.

The major challenge in this process is not the technical, nor even the huge and complex task of co-ordination between all of these designers for a smooth installation, but designing to budget. The Owner necessarily is investing into a great and prestigious project, but needs ROI. Imagine the multiplication of costs or saving of costs where a US$100 price difference on just one piece of equipment is applied to 500 guest rooms. Then consider the furniture, beds, linen, pictures, telephones, TV, loudspeakers, air-conditioning, lighting, decoration, and so on. There is huge and continuous pressure to minimise costs while at the same time meeting the Hotel Group Standards. Even the construction of walls needs negotiation – as Acoustic Consultant, we will be offering wall designs meeting the STC (Sound-Transmission) requirements using gypsum, but also hollow-block and so on, until the best local priced materials are settled upon, and as AV Consultant, every additional 25mm of loudspeaker diameter will be argued and justified.

101 Storeys of Hotel (Four Seasons Guangzhou in China)

Coordination is needed from a very early stage of Construction

Difficult Spots to cover with Music...

SPECIAL FEATURE 59Systems Integration Asia October - November 2015

Primary Audio-Visual SystemsThe typical five-star hotel will have the following AV Systems firmly and permanently installed:

• Background Music System• Meeting Room System• Ballroom – Grown-up but more manual

version of the Meeting Room!• Digital Signage System• Guestroom Control System – very

different to classical Meeting Room Control

BGM SystemThe BGM – Background Music – system is at the heart of almost all hotels. Once commissioned, it should run untouched for the next 10 years, literally not switched off or even looked at, until the Hotel upgrades/refurbishes. The Music itself IS updated typically monthly, by the contracted Music Provider, who selects music relevant to the Hotel ethos and Outlets (Chinese music for the Chinese Restaurant…), but who also screens the music for profane and political content, and handles the Music Industry royalties.

Typically, there will be around 16 channels of Music from the BGM system, around 6 of which are for local-selection within the Massage Treatment Rooms, and the rest for the Public areas of the Hotel, including corridors and washrooms, and often, the elevators, but almost never for the guest rooms nor guest floor corridors.

Each channel of music might be routed to just one loudspeaker (a massage room for example), or perhaps 20 circuits (e.g. Lobby, Lobby lounge, elevators, public corridors and washrooms) of loudspeakers. There are finally 100’s of loudspeakers and perhaps 30 to 40 amplifier channels, all of which can operate at high-voltage, allowing the amplifiers to be completely centralised if wished.

Areas of the Hotel with high SPL-requirements, such as Ballroom and Live Music venues, and those with wider frequency-response needs, such as the Massage treatment rooms and Spa need low-impedance or self-powered loudspeakers, and the audio processing

and amplifiers are located within those venues.

It’s obvious that AVB or Dante would be used for this distribution, and DSP as the routing and signal-processing means. But it’s not true. There are many hotels designed even now with no DSP (so no equalisation, easy routing, nor Ethernet-borne commands for volume and source etc), but with simple Zoning mixers, analogue volume controls/source selectors, and 70/100V-distribution. Why? Because it costs a lot less and the result is the “same” and easy to use. We can’t always use the technically-best or “modern” methods, since we have a duty to look after the Investors money. Even local input from say, simple lounge band, or an MP3 player, can be handled using a pair of Baluns and a run

of UTP cable. The projects which do use at least a DSP, can benefit from using wireless tablets (see pictures above) for controlling the areas (or Zones – many restaurants are large, and even having the same music source, are divided into several Zones (loudspeaker circuits) allowing quieter and more energetic areas to be created.

The BGM for more critical areas such as bars and also complex Ballrooms needs audio-modelling; we use EASE which is a popular 3D-modelling software. Below (Figure 1) we see the simulation for Swire’s EAST hotel in Beijing, Xian bar, a particularly complex multi-space Bar with Live band, needing different delay, equalisation, and staff-controlled volume-control per room.

BGM Zones all shown The Volume Icons show the relative volume per Zone…

…once done, the areas deselect after the timeout period

Emergency Paging will mute all areas automatically

Figure 1: Xian bar from an Audio Consultants perspective (it serves drinks too!)

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Meeting Room SystemsMeeting Rooms, also called Function Rooms, are exceptionally flexible spaces in a Hotel. A classroom in the morning, dining venue at lunchtime, boardroom in the afternoon, cocktail function in the evening really wouldn’t be unusual. Inexperienced users, spilled wine, permanent marker pen used on the projection screen, need to connect VGA laptops, wireless Miracast & Airplay, suddenly a composite video Source, the Rooms must cope with all of these.

Technically, the rooms vary from a BGM zone with a few ceiling loudspeakers plus portable projection screen & projector, to fully-integrated systems with nicely-programmed window blinds, room lighting, motorised projector & screen controlled by the room touchpanel and personal WiFi-connected devices. HD-BaseT has been the technology of choice until recently, but is seeing TCP/IP streaming becoming more popular, and we expect as the interfaces become smaller and can mount in-wall, that the technology will fit very well, enabling room-sharing of AV naturally via the AVLAN.

Simple or advanced, Hotel meeting rooms rely on something very non-AV – the AV Technician or the Banqueting Team, depending upon which Hotel Group it is. This is the glue which in truth holds things together. In the end, hospitality is what the hotels are focussed on, and are good at, and here the luckless guest waving his Macbook and the Room VGA connector in the air in desperation, or the iPhone user who just can’t seem to connect to the “Spinworkz_MR1” WiFi VLAN 5 minutes before the presentation starts, gets enabled.

Programming of Integrated control systems is critically-dependant on an easy-to-use and VERY intuitive logic and screen layout. This is because many users will walk in and use the system for the first time, and maybe not again for many months or the next year when their company books the room again.

BallroomThe Ballroom is the battleground, 60metres x 40metres x10metres high not untypical, with a couple of operable walls to divide it into 3 sections as needed.

Battleground because especially in Asia, the Ballroom is profoundly beautiful with no drop-tile ceilings ever, and

even though we as engineers know that the loudspeakers are beautiful too, the architect doesn’t. Everything is super-sized..350”projection & larger LED screens, motorised 20,000 lumen projectors which must lower 9 metres for maintenance, 100+dB 40Hz-20KHz audio performance, ability to suspend a car from the ceiling now and again…on and on, and all to be ideally not seen (except the displayed images).

Even the hanging systems come under the remit of the AV Consultant to design – half of all Ballroom events are run by outside AV/Lighting/Rigging Contractors who will re-colour the Ballroom using drapes all round, fly trusses, and only require the hanging-supports and 3-Phase power.

3 example uses of a Meeting Room; no furniture for cocktail functions would be another

Contractor presenting their finished installation for handover…Plenty of chance to think-through what’s wrong with the projector alignment!

VGA Source-selection touchscreen in a major city in China with 2 inputs and just a projector, but depicts the Matrix used, with 8x Inputs and 4x Outputs!! Lucky the user who ever achieves displaying their PC!

Decorative Ceiling Closer panel under each of the 5 Projectors in this ballroom-retrofit

SPECIAL FEATURE 61Systems Integration Asia October - November 2015

80% of Ballrooms will not have the budget for permanent Front-of-House Loudspeakers, nor for wall-mounted beam-steered arrays, and so ceiling loudspeakers systems are the mainstay, with powerful and effective capability, once properly-equalised to the room. We target 105dB continuous SPL at ear-level

as the capability for these systems, as they must not only provide for speech, but stand-in for the missing FOH loudspeakers for Hotel-run Events where powerful sound is required.

AV Connectivity is via typically “Tieline Panels” at the skirtings and floorboxes, classically with many XLR’s for Microphone-level signals, BNC’s for video, RJ45’s for Analogue and Digital signal-extension, and DMX-512 for stage lighting control. Ethernet-connectivity is reducing the number of connectors and cables, as well as use of proprietary switching boxes at the AV Control Room.

Digital Signage SystemThe Signage system has simplified considerably in recent years with the evolution of multimedia units small enough to fit behind the flat panel display, and sit on the Digital Signage VLAN. Addressable singly, or in groups, these systems nicely replace the older concept of racks full of PC’s using twisted-pair VGA extenders, and before that, printed paper pinned to the wall.

Located outside the Meeting Rooms, Ballroom Sections, and in Lobbies to these areas as well as to the Hotel itself, various monitors are selected from 8”to 55” typically, according to the Interior designer’s needs, as well as the practical application.

The difficult part is the coordination of these displays to be actually flushed to the wall, have no cables nor brackets showing at all, and no brand name sideways-on nor user-controls for passers-by to play with.

Guest Room Control SystemWhilst the Ballroom is the Mega-area needing designing with all its difficult coordination, the Guestroom is actually extremely challenging too. Any mistake is replicated 100, 500, even 1,000 times according to how many rooms. For this reason, an early part of all of our work for each Hotel is the MUR – Mock-Up Room, a full-sized actual room, often in the construction site, built years ahead of the final rooms.

The TV is a Hospitality TV and never a domestic one, because this class of TV has wired remote control for positive on/off commands, as well as volume-limiting, bathroom loudspeaker amplifier, digital up/down volume control and

Disaster in Design coordination, where chandeliers block the view of the screen

T&C work here in Grand Hyatt Dalian ends up being at the same time as the other trades finishing works

With inevitable results

Bare finishes – no backdrop Makati Shangri-La

Watch Launch event with same Ballroom, but in White

Charity Gala, again same Ballroom, but in black

Waldorf Astoria Beijing and St. Regis Hotel Digital Signage

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much else. Signal delivery varies from classical SMATV Analogue Coax, to Digital Coax, to IPTV. In China, for complex reasons, many Hotels have to be built with both IPTV and Coax.

A Set-Top box in-between the Signal feed and the TV has been necessary for many years, since messaging is addressed to the guest personally from the Hotel Property Management System (PMS), but newer models of Hospitality TV now come with inbuilt browsers capable of decoding the TV signal internally, providing the IPTV system supports the Protocol.

An AV Connection Panel used to be provided in each room of most hotel Brands, but today very few are having this designed. Instead we are enabling the Guests to connect their handheld and many laptop devices to the TV wirelessly, via Miracast which is built-in to the TV’s, and Airplay for Apple systems. Airplay is easily provided via an Apple TV box along with VLAN per guestroom, or via the IPTV for some IPTV System Providers.

These days, the Guestroom Control Systems are being designed more by the Audio-Visual Consultant, where they used to be handled by the MEP – Mechanical & Electrical – Consultant, a natural change as this is the natural domain of the Audio-Visual discipline.

Keeping it Working

Another important process is the System documentation which includes full copies of the software, GUI files, Firmware Revision data, URL’s of the manufacturers Support pages, as well as the as-built documentation and Operation & Maintenance manuals, and labelling of the rack equipment and all rack- and site-cables, also reflected in the System Schematics.

This does not happen naturally, nor easily, and needs constant pressure

from the AV Consultant through her/his own design details, through to writing the Tender and on to the Testing & Commissioning period.

ConclusionsWe have briefly reviewed herein the Nuts and Bolts of Audio-Visual in the Hotel Industry, since the hotel encompasses a wide range of hospitality functions.The process never stands still, evolving with every new project due to the combination of technology advances, the constant desire of the Hotel Groups to improve their service, and the need to offer better than our daily home experience. This needs also flexibility as typical hotel projects last 3-5 years, with the design completed 1-2 years before completion; imagine the present impact on issued and tendered design, of Bluetooth-enabled doorlocks suddenly having appeared, or of the Apple Lightning connector earlier suddenly replacing the 30-pin dock connector.

We are already putting 4K TV into some Hotel Group Guest rooms, and equipping Ballrooms with 4K Ethernet connectivity, and are working with the Hotel Groups to agree the way forward, as well as with the Owners and Developers to accept the changes to what was often contracted not months but years ago.

In short, the Hospitality Industry is a demanding but exciting one, much faster-moving than the actual outward construction process suggests, and needs our vigilance and adaptability as engineers!!

W-Hotel in China. Entrance to the Mock-Up Room, from the Construction Site; hard boots removed outside

Just metres from the cranes and diggers, operational TV, bottles of wine, and behind, the made-up bed

iPad Mini for wireless room control

Window blackout, TV channels, Movies and more

Equipment labellingihD Ltd is a Hong Kong-registered Private Limited Company, specialising in Technology Consultancy (ELV, Audio-Visual, Acoustic, IT and Security) Design and Consultancy, and related periodic project monitoring during construction phases. Our offices in China, India, Malaysia, and the Philippines focus on these and nearby countries, whilst the Hong Kong head office directs the group, develops policies and standards, and executes projects Asia-wide.

www.ihd-hk.com