Efficiency
As part of the property’s green initiatives, Kempinski Hotel Mall of the Emirates introduced a new in-room energy management system in November 2012.
Through the use of nearly 3500 Zigbee wireless devices and a unique thermostat technology called ‘recovery time’, this system automatically determines whether the guest is present in the room or not and adjusts the air-conditioning and lighting accordingly to reduce energy wasted.
The forecasted annual savings for this energy management solution include a 19% energy cost reduction and an average of 425 hours runtime savings on energy per guest room.
Concept and Investment
The internet bandwidth project, including the optimisation of the wi-fi performance at the hotel, took almost a year to complete and included discussions and negotiations with external service providers. Internally the IT team had three people engaged for the duration of the project and the main investment was time and resources.
| Advertisement |
The Opera2Go beta project went live at the end of October 2012 and took about eight months of testing and optimisation along with the Micros-Fidelio development team in the US to implement.
As the hotel is part of the pilot project for the EMEA region for this implementation, the property has been able to substantially reduce project cost.
In Practice
The hotel rolled out the various initiatives with the sales teams and conference and banqueting teams first. It provided workshops and subsequent training on how to sell and explain these new solutions to the guests.
“From the guests’ perspective, we ensured that the roll-out was seamless and self explanatory,” Rupasinghe says.
Opera2Go was first rolled out to the front office department in a test environment set up for employees to train on over a period of four months before the solution went live.
The results to date
The burstable internet bandwidth and ubiquitous wi-fi deployment project has resulted in an increase in the base bandwidth by four times up to 50Mbps without incurring any additional costs, and the ability to provide dedicated internet bandwidth speeds up to 200Mbps to guests.
This project also received an award at the Hotel Technology Next Generation (HTNG) European Conference held in Vienna in December where Kempinski Hotel Mall of the Emirates was named one of the 2012 EMEA Hotel Technology Innovators.
Furthermore, the hotel has seen a reduction in technology-related issues and complaints from guests along with an increase in customer satisfaction scores since the implementation.
The introduction of iPads in the hotel’s restaurants has resulted in a significant reduction in marketing spend and printing costs as updates to menus and promotions can now be done digitally. The use of iPads is currently being extended to other outlets in the hotel as it has proven to be a cost-effective solution.
“After the installation of the in-room energy management system, we have seen a reduction in guest complaints relating to in-room temperature controls. At the same time the system has enhanced guest service in terms of the room make-up request and do not disturb facility as this is now fully automated,” says Rupasinghe.
As the Opera2Go implementation is still in its beta stage, the team does not yet have any concrete results available, but hopes to have these towards the end of the first quarter.
“Our focus on mobility continues in 2013 and we are currently in the process of implementing a digital guest experience in the rooms. We have entered into a partnership with IRIS UK to provide a digital platform whereby guests have access to an interactive guest directory offering intuitive and on-demand access to all hotel services , ” he reveals.
Article continues on next page ...
Search our database of more than 2,700 industry companies
