The Scandic Hotel Group offers business and leisure travellers alike the finest accommodation in some of the world's greatest cities. Maintaining each guest's enjoyment of their stay, within the highest standards of accommodation is the four-star, hotel chain's priority. Allied to guest security and peace of mind, the management at the flagship 204-bedroomed Scandic Hotel, Antwerp, felt a comprehensive update to their CCTV surveillance system would prove beneficial.
To fulfil their vision, Scandic management enlisted the help of installer Electro Zwijsen of Duffel, Belgium, to specify and install a discreet, high-performance surveillance solution. Kris De Boeck of Electro Zwijsen takes up the story: "The Scandic management wanted the ability to track people through the hotel if necessary, this required cameras to be installed in each corridor of the eight-floor hotel, main lobby, lift areas, emergency exits and the hotel's car park. Using traditional coax cable transmission in the hotel would have meant a lengthy and labour intensive installation process, with masses of coax cable needed to connect each camera installed.With this in mind, we turned to our equipment supplier ARAS Indusec for ideas on a technical alternative."
Alain Sarteel, of ARAS Indusec explains: "It was clear from the beginning of the project that the high-level of system performance the hotel management demanded, coupled with the installation issues presented by a traditional, bulky coax transmission method made the project an ideal candidate for the use of NVT's UTP video transmission technology. Kris and the Electro Zwijsen team had not used NVT transmission equipment before but with comprehensive technical backup from ARAS Indusec and NVT, were able to promote the benefits an NVT UTP based transmission system would bring, and train their installation engineers to fit the products quickly and easily."
Transmitting images from the twenty speed dome cameras via NVT technology allowed the Electro Zwijsen team to use far less cabling than would have been the case usng a traditional coax system, resulting in a quicker and easier installation. This also required far less disturbance to the opulent decor of the hotel, as Kris explains: "With technical cooperation from ARAS Indusec and NVT we were able to employ 8-channel NVT receiver hubs, located on every second floor of the hotel. UTP ‘spurs' feed camera video from the adjacent two floors to their relative hub, which are in-turn, linked via a UTP backbone to two 16-channel DVR recorders in the hotel's reception area on the ground floor, where a control workstation is also located."
Francis Mallentjer, Chief Engineer for Safety and Security at the hotel continues: "From this control point, our staff can monitor the entire hotel, easily locating a guest throughout the large building. In addition to the benefit of 24-hour security surveillance being provided for both staff and guests, the crystal-clear images provide a key tool in the daily management of the hotel, allowing up-to the minute progress updates of daily procedures, such the servicing of rooms and other general daily servicing of the hotel." Kris De Boeck of Electro Zwijsen concludes: "Due to the success of the Scandic installation, and the superior real-time video performance and ease of installation benefits we gained, versus the use of coax transmission, we have decided to exclusively use NVT and UTP for all our future camera installations."
