The Gran Marquise is a five-star hotel of 18 thousand square metres located on the seafront of Fortaleza (Ceará). With a 23 year history, the hotel has a large infrastructure of 230 apartments ranging in size and plays host to high level politicians and entertainers such as, Bill Clinton, former president of the United States, Vladimir Putin, Paul McCartney and rapper Snoop Dogg.

Recognising a need for an upgrade from its comprehensive but dated existing system, the hotel wanted to solve the dilemma and improve the management and security of the hotel. A plan was formulated to develop a pilot project with Vivotek – a global provider of network cameras, PoE switches, and network video recorders, and Genetec, a global provider of IP surveillance software, access control and license plate recognition solutions.

Divided into four stages, the goal of the project was to enable the total unification of management, security, marketing and commercial operations. In the first phase, 250 analogue cameras were replaced by just 48 Vivotek network cameras. Also installed was the Genetec Stratocast software, a cloud-based video recorder tool that eliminates the need for any local server, making it possible to monitor and share images with fully encrypted data. Two models of network cameras were installed throughout the hotel: one is the IB8369A, a 2-megapixel camera capable of capturing high quality video, with IR illuminators effective up to 30 metres for superior image quality throughout the day and night. The camera also features Smart Stream II technology, which optimises image quality for the most important regions in any scene; in doing so it can reduce network bandwidth consumption and storage requirements by up to 50%. The other camera installed was the small-scale, but big-featured FD8166, an ultra-mini fixed dome network camera with a tiny diameter of only 90mm.

"Because of the ‘L’ shaped layout of the hotel, we previously had five analogue cameras installed on each floor: two in the corridor, because the distance from one side to the other was too long to be monitored by a single analogue camera; one in front of the elevator; another covering the 'L' and one more covering the maid’s service area. Now, each floor has only three cameras: one camera that serves the 'L' and the elevator; another that serves the corridor and one more observing the service area. At the reception area, the same thing happens, we put a different camera on the ceiling, and with just that solution we managed to cover the lobby, the bar, a part of the reception and the stairs of the restaurant," explained Gomes.

In the second phase, the Genetec Security Center solution was implemented for the internal parts of the hotel. With this platform, Gran Marquise can unify operations by combining all IP surveillance systems into one interface. Now all access control and video surveillance are connected to, and accessible through, the cloud.

The third and fourth stages are still in progress. The goal is to install 250 network cameras in total and unify the security system with access controls and the fire alarm system. In addition the Kiwivision analytical software was also installed, a system which counts people automatically through cameras and 3D sensors and detects objects added or removed from a scene. This way it is possible to automatically detect if a dangerous object has left behind or if something has been stolen from a particular area.

"The new security system has come to improve the image quality of surveillance, the layout of the hotel and the promptness of response to the customer. In the past, if we needed an image we had to expend great effort in searching whole files and spend hours watching videos to be able to select and retrieve the relevant event - not to mention the impact power failures, and malfunctions issues in power supplies, recorders and hard disk drives", said Gomes.