How a hotel chain started from scratch to change its CCTV recording from tapes to digital, and brought about security as well as some non-security benefits.
It’s a rainy spring weekday afternoon. A steady stream of guests are checking into the Radisson Edwardian Sussex Hotel in Granville Place. It’s off Oxford Street at the Marble Arch end. Among comfortable chairs – it is a four-star establishment; a standard room costs £129 plus VAT – consultant Nick Kalsi is describing how, and why, the hotel group went digital with its CCTV recording. Security at this hotel is discreet, but it is there. The lift only works if you enter a valid access control card. Equally, if you want to go up the stairs, you have to enter your card to access the door. The vestibule and the bar area beyond are each covered by a discreet dome camera set in the ceiling. (It was lost on me, but according to www.radisson.com those “public areas feature Fabbian Italian lighting, slate floors and a leather reception designed by Poltrona Frau. Art in public areas includes paintings by Vietnamese artist Tran Dinh Phuong.”) Radisson, Nick begins, had the objective of making sure that guests as well as staff were safe. The company wanted also to monitor all 12 hotels in the group from one location.
Nick began by surfing the internet; and by visiting the IFSEC exhibition. “I must have looked at at least 18 or 19 different hard disc recorders,” he recalls. “There were certain criteria that Radisson wanted. Number one was to be able to manage the HDD remotely, and also view in real time what was going on, remotely, as well. And also to play back the image that was recorded, within two or three seconds. Locally and remotely.” The company wanted to be able to save the CCTV data, print it, and e-mail pictures. The company did research too on data protection, to understand procedures so as to stay within the data protection rules – how to make back-ups of digital images, for example. As a member of the Institute of Hotel Security Managers (featured in our March 2003 issue) and with good relations with police in central London and at Heathrow, the hotel group might want to pass digital images to police. Nick sums up: “What we wanted was a system that was very flexible to use, easy to manage, so nobody would have to struggle for anything.” Meridian Security Solutions installed the cameras, “but we did a lot of research with them and ourselves to ensure that the investment we were putting in was 100 per cent accurate to our requirements.”
Radisson spoke also to Richardson Electronics, speaking to the distributor’s research and development staff about product enhancements that the hotel would require. Rather than installing in dribs and drabs, the hotel chain removed its VCRs and replaced them with hard disc drives; and tested dome cameras (colour, and black and white) from CDC. The hotel chain has some 400 cameras, a mix of colour and mono; domes, and pan and tilts. “We did some analysis to find out how much it would cost just to replace VCRs with hard disc drives, and did a second analysis to completely renew the entire infrastructure.” After about three months, a plan was in hand: “We actually came to a conclusion that the Capture product recommended by Richardson Electronics was the most favourable product, purely because it used low bandwidth for our WAN.” The hotel group’s wide area network, then, is used to transmit its CCTV system’s data, besides the day to day business transaction data. Nick adds: “We have a control room in Heathrow, manned. They are able to see activities external to our hotel, as well as internally. This is to safeguard when guests come in, to make sure their baggage is fine; and we have cameras within our lifts, within staff areas, locker areas, all public areas. Nick reports the hotel chain has a hard disc recording system that does not require re-boots, and that does not crash: “Once they were installed, they had some minor issues, which were resolved immediately by Richardsons.”
“We use CCTV for everything,” says Mohamed Elsabahy, group CCTV manager. He gives examples of the uses of the system not in terms of crimes, but of what you might call day to day management of the building. For example, what if a guest says he came in with five items of luggage, but he is saying he now only has four? With CCTV, the hotel can check the guest’s story, by viewing footage from when the guest came in. Or when guests check out and hand over their bags to the concierge; similarly, thanks to CCTV the hotel chain can make sure that the same number of bags was handed to the member of staff as the guest has returned to him. Nick reports a significant drop in insurance claims.
Hows and whys
About 18 months ago, Radisson found itself in the same boat as many users of CCTV recorded on videotape. There was a mix of various makes of VCRs. Tapes were not changed regularly. If there was an incident that the hotel wanted to view, there was lots of time wasted searching the tapes. There were no dedicated personnel for CCTV; and no CCTV service contract. Hence the aim was to create a safe environment for guests, and staff; to promote security enhancements in a marketing strategy; and to centralise CCTV, guest and door security readers for all hotels, including fire alarms. The company also sought to integrate access control with the time and attendance system. Staying within the Data Protection Act, Radisson wanted to allow police access to the company’s network. Alarms on doors would be connected to CCTV, and integrated with devices such as smoke alarms, so that the hotel could give evidence to police. Radisson wanted also to enhance car park security with automatic number plate recognition (ANPR). Goals of the project, then, were to upgrade all VCRs to hard disc recorders, and to upgrade monochrome cameras to colour, where required. Similarly, where required the hotel would install additional cameras. There would be dedicated security personnel. CCTV would be proactive, to prevent thefts in hotels; and management of CCTV would allow authorised staff to manage remote cameras. A service contract would be put in place, for regular maintenance of the hardware.
The Capture hard disc recorder from Richardson Electronics with a hard disc of 520 gigabytes would allow recording for a long period – one month or more. Picture quality would be such as to improve identification. Maintenance would be less, and would mean less down time. The feature of playing back video while recording would mean there was not interruption of recording while viewing an important event. The product’s search functions would allow easy and fast retrieval of an event, so that staff could react to the event quickly. The Capture product has various levels of access; only key members of staff can fully administer the system.
