海角视频

Smart Hotel Portfolio Strategy

Middle East

海角视频 developed a bespoke digital strategy for a major Middle Eastern hospitality development company working on a large scale and ambitious project in the region.

The project required the provision of a significant portfolio of new hotels and serviced apartments of varying sizes, ranging from those focused on attracting international tourism to those serving the needs of visiting business executives, project partners and delegations. Our client is both the asset developer and future operator for the portfolio.

We created a blueprint for the large-scale project鈥檚 digital strategy, which will feed directly into each brief at the point of tendering for each hotel scheme.

Our teams conducted an initial horizon-scanning exercise to build a picture of best practice internationally in smart technology integration for the hotel industry.

We translated experience design into a set of innovative use cases and then defined technology needs and a roadmap for delivery.

Our experts helped to define the strategic objectives of the client, refine the business requirements of the hotels, and showcase the ways in which smart solutions can play a key role.

Challenge

Given the ambition and future-focus of the project, it was critical for the hotels to act as a showcase and benchmark for the latest, evolving digital technologies, from those designed to improve the guests鈥� experiences and revenue for the operator, to those focused on improving back-of-house operations and efficiencies.

Although there was no doubt that smart and innovative technologies provided a significant opportunity, our immediate client, the Chief Technology Officer, required a mixture of business, digital and engineering expertise to 鈥榥avigate the noise鈥� in the market to determine what functionality was most important for guests, staff, owners, and stakeholders.

It was also important to define which smart technologies were feasible for their unique portfolio and which they should invest in to maximise value, as well as asking how best to ensure those technologies are designed and implemented consistently across their portfolio. We also looked at how the client can future-proof its portfolio, given the rapid pace of technology advancement.

Solution

Our smart places, digital and data experts developed tailored smart portfolio strategy and design standards or 鈥榖lueprints鈥� for the client consisting of three key elements. The first looked at coupling 海角视频鈥檚 proprietary 鈥�smart places use-case catalogue鈥� with an extensive market analysis of the most forward-thinking global hotels.

We identified the 鈥榓rt of the possible鈥� for our client and worked with them to understand its underlying business drivers, as well as its stakeholder and end-user needs. This deep understanding was used to prioritise 73 clear and concrete 鈥榰se-cases鈥� that were most valuable and feasible for the client, including 鈥榞uest room personalisation鈥�, 鈥榗leaning robots鈥�, 鈥榮eamless check-in鈥� and many more.

We identified the technology packages required to enable the prioritised functionality, examining how those technology packages should fit together in an 鈥榓rchitecture鈥� that was most cost-effective, secure, and future-proofed, as well as screening the market for appropriate vendors to support the next phase of demonstration and testing within a lab environment.

Finally, we detailed the design guidelines and specifications of each technology package, into a smart 鈥榖lueprint鈥�, to guide individual hotel design teams and ensure our client benefits from a consistent design across the portfolio, allowing cost-effective maintenance and the capability to unlock value from aggregated insights.

Technology packages include the digital infrastructure (e.g. wifi, Internet of Things (IoT) sensors, fibre); the building systems (e.g. Building Management Systems (BMS), lighting, security and access control); the hardware (e.g. user interfaces); and the software (e.g. mobile applications, platforms).

We ensured the skills to make it happen were in place to inform the asset briefs of each individual project, supporting procurement of a master system integrator to implement the technologies architecture and define technology packages.

We went on to lay out the roadmap for a successful delivery process, which included engaging with the client鈥檚 plans for a digital hotel 鈥渓aboratory鈥� 鈥� a mock-up of an ideal, fully digitally-integrated hotel, which helped to highlight the technical capacity and potential challenges for each separate project.

Value

Our team identified the functionality that will maximise revenue, operational efficiency, sustainability and guest experience. We also helped the client to avoid significant cost and time in navigating the supplier market by shortlisting around 50 vendors to deliver the required functionality.

The technology domain briefs will empower each design team to integrate a high standard of smart buildings design across all requirements, ensuring our client benefits from a coherent design across the whole portfolio. This will result in significant cost avoidance through standardised future upgrades or maintenance and will unlock additional value through the ability to manage and operate the hotels鈥� data to provide intelligence at a portfolio level.

We also produced an initial standard infrastructure blueprint, which could be applied to each hotel, to deliver sufficient provision for today鈥檚 digital technologies, but also enable flexibility for future proofing the facilities 鈥� ensuring they are able to accommodate tomorrow鈥檚 technological evolutions.