Project Outline
Sea Containers London is a 15 floor, 365 bedroom prestige hotel, located in the centre of London on the South Bank near Blackfriars Bridge, opposite St. Paul’s Cathedral. Indeed, the hotel boasts a range of notable facilities and guest experiences, including the accolade….. the ‘worlds’ best bar in 2018.
This large project was split into three core installation elements.
- Front of house areas – inc reception, lobbies, spa, gyms, restaurant etc.
- Back of house areas – primary staff areas such as the kitchens, house keeping, maintenance etc.
- Guest bedrooms and associated access areas / lobbies
Working directly with the Hotel management and engineering support team, we were able to schedule much of the Back of House (BoH) installation works during normal working hours. However, the bedrooms and bedroom corridors, were scheduled during an aggressive refurbishment schedule (rooms were vacated and returned for occupation within 1-3 days).
Audio Applications
- Public Address (PA) / Tannoy
- Background Music (BGM)
- Mass Notification, integrated security and ‘lockdown’ audio interface
Audio Specification & Technologies
- IP Speakers x 120
- 100v line, high impedance x 500+
- IP Audio message player
- IP / SIP telephony interface
Installation Details
Working with the hotel branding team, for the front of house areas of the hotel, most of the speakers were professionally painted to colour match the chosen installation locations. Speaker design and capability were chosen aligned with branding and performance to match output capability (eg. full range, 2-way speakers for most areas).
Many areas of the hotel had existing spare capacity of Cat6 cabling, PoE switch ports and network sockets. This position and availability was identified by the customer IT management team. Our direction and instruction was to install IP audio (IP speakers) for any such areas. Some 120 x IP speakers were installed, simplifying roll out, reducing disruption with minimal invasive installation works.
A number of areas in the Hotel required specialist audio consideration with specific audio capability (eg. bar areas, gyms and saunas). These areas were designed and installed separately with matching system equipment and specialist audio components and speakers (eg. Bose Control Space, Crestron controllers, bar and DJ control points).
Speaker/s were installed into each of the hotels bedrooms to ensure audibility quality. This presented a particular challenge, as our works had to be fitted around a very tightly scheduled time window for room availability before handed back for guest occupation.
IP audio is used extensively throughout this project. IP speakers as discussed, but also for IP audio transmission throughout. IP microphones are used for general Public Address (PA) / Tannoy. IP audio message players are used for browser access to selected audio message playback (eg. security announcements). IP interface coders are also used to interconnect legacy audio equipment and to provide priority signalling for mute conditions when required (eg. mute of BGM during message playback or PA announcements).
