Grand Hyatt Melbourne

As Melbourne’s first five-star hotel, the Grand Hyatt stands as the epitome of luxury. Measuring 123 metres in height over 37 floors, the hotel’s guest rooms offer floor-to-ceiling skyline or Yarra River views.

In the heart of the Paris end of Melbourne’s Collins St, the 550-room Grand Hyatt Melbourne towers over the bustling streets beneath. Delivering the ultimate guest experience in a building that combines the old-world glamour of Italian marble and vintage leather with business facilities, technology needed to move with the times. In 2009, the hotel began a complete interior redesign of their guest rooms, including contracting mySmart to retrofit the hotel with communication and monitoring systems. mySmart has eighteen years’ experience in creating intelligent environments and is the exclusive Australian distributor for Honeywell’s Inncom systems.

mySmart’s work with Grand Hyatt took place over three stages.

Stage One

The first stage of the retrofit involved the installation of Inncom’s Energy Management System into 106 guest rooms, the best-in-class solution available in 2009. The system covers occupancy-based HVAC and lighting control. An internal Make-Up Room/Privacy Panel and External Hallway Bell Push with Chime & MUR/Privacy Indicators was also fitted to alert staff to guest requests.

Stage Two

Second stage work began in 2010. Over a six-month period, mySmart was scheduled to continue the installation of INNCOM’s Energy Management System through retrofitting 440 additional guest rooms. However, budget restrictions prevented the networking of all the guest rooms to the system software at this stage. In anticipation of networking being activated in the future, network cabling was laid from each guest room to the hotel’s risers, coiled and identified to be installed with network switches.

Stage Three

The third stage of the retrofit was approved in 2018 and involved connecting all guest rooms to INNcontrol^TM 3 (IC3) client-server application for in-room, real-time monitoring and control. IC3 has the ability to communicate with other hotel server-based systems and provide a 3D interactive rendering of the property and rooms, allowing staff to select individual rooms.

The Grand Hyatt’s engineers also chose to implement the new high-speed fiber switching technologies to increase connectivity speeds. As the cabling had been laid in 2010 and was available for termination, the scale of work required was far less than previously.

As an additional benefit to guests, the decision was made to upgrade the door locking system to be online and accessible via INNcontrol^TM 3’s interface. The INNCOM Guest Room System, which previously operated in standalone mode, was easily upgraded to communicate wirelessly with the door locking system using ZigBee Technology. ZigBee is a low-cost, low-power, wireless mesh network ideally suited to keyless entry locking solutions. The Inncom Network could then ‘carry’ the door locking system data, meaning that only one network system was required, saving the hotel considerable cost.

Energy Efficiency

Energy stands as the hotel industry’s second-greatest operating cost, with the greatest load on heating, cooling and lighting. One of the main drawcards of implementing intelligent monitoring technology, mySmart anticipates that the INNCOM software will save the Grand Hyatt Melbourne up to 15% in energy costs through thermostat and lighting control. The INNcontrol^TM 3 also guards against frozen compressors and optimises chiller loading, minimising revenue loss.

Futureproofing

David Zammit, Director of Engineering for the Grand Hyatt Melbourne, commented that the hotel’s substantial investment in intelligent technology was worth it to futureproof the building against constant change. Having had the foresight to engage mySmart in providing solutions as far back as 2009, he now sees the hotel’s staff and guests reaping the benefits of networking the systems using improved, lower-cost connectivity. Through working in partnership with the Grand Hyatt Melbourne’s engineers, mySmart has been able to grow, adapt and evolve future-ready intelligent solutions according to the hotel’s budget and requirements.

The support of mySmart’s David Wilson and Michael O’Dea over the past ten years since we introduced INNCOM to our hotel has been instrumental in having our upgrade approved.  The project coordination with the installation team was efficient and reliable, along with post-project teething issues being resolved promptly.