Case Study
Customer
Grand Daddy Hotel
Industry Sector: Hospitality
Location: Cape Town, South Africa
Application: Digital Art Gallery
Customer Profile
Residing beneath the iconic Table Mountain and inner city skyline, The Grand Daddy Hotel in Cape Town is the world’s first hotel to boast a penthouse suite of seven authentic vintage Airstream trailers. The hotel is a part of the Daddy Long Legs Group, which also opened Cape Town’s original art hotel, Daddy Long Legs.
In 2008, the group acquired one of Cape Town’s oldest hospitality properties, the Metropole Hotel. The somewhat austere interior was overhauled with the help of interior stylist, Tracy Lynch, who enlisted a posse of local artists to ensure that the rooms were stripped of their bland anonymous feel.
With the addition of the Pink Flamingo open-air cinema, the Daddy Cool bar, the Showroom Café, conference facilities and Cape Town’s only digital art and photographic gallery, the Grand Daddy Hotel is a boutique hotel experience that celebrates generosity, creativity and Cape Town.
Customer Challenge
As part of the hotel’s commitment to the local art community, the digital art gallery was envisioned as a showcase for the beauty and culture of Africa’s creative mecca. The gallery consists of seven Panasonic plasma displays, mounted in portrait and landscape orientation.
The central challenge for the hotel was how to manage the variety of content that would be submitted by artists on a regular basis. Having rejected solutions based on analogue AV equipment, owner Jody Aufrichtig investigated the possibility of using digital signage technology to drive the screens.
Sergio Dreyer, who would be responsible for managing the network, was particularly keen to avoid a complicated technical set-up that would necessitate format conversions or 3rd party services. The system also had to account for quick turnaround of scheduled content when special events at the hotel required branded media on-screen.
Isenzo Solution
Isenzo proposed the installation of a digital content network using our Mediacaster software. With support for portrait and landscape orientations, an easy-to-use interface, and compatibility with a wide variety of digital content, Mediacaster is designed specifically for people who want to manage their own content networks.
Taking advantage of the low CPU requirements of the Mediacaster player software, seven Intel Atom computers were specified for the player PCs, providing a low-cost and energy-friendly solution. Mediacaster Manager was installed on an existing office PC and all the PCs were connected to the hotel’s internal network, allowing every screen to be scheduled independently.
“Mediacaster makes it so easy to change content on the gallery screens,” said Sergio, “and in a high pressure environment like our hotel and conference facility, the ability to do this quickly and reliably is of great benefit. We are very happy with the end-result.”
Quicklinks
News
| Mediacaster powers Hello Mojo "ii-stations" during 2010 FIFA World Cup™ Thursday, 10 June 2010 Urban media practitioners, Hello Mojo, have selected Isenzo’s digital signage software to power integrated information stations (ii-stations) situated in high traffic locations across South Africa. |
| Isenzo Releases Mediacaster 3.0 Service Pack 1 Thursday, 03 June 2010 Mediacaster 3.0 Service Pack 1 has been released adding numerous exciting new features as well as fixing some bugs. |
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