Jumeirah Emirates Towers Hotel

LCD and touch screen specialists DisplayLite supply multi-award winning Jumeirah Emirates Towers Hotel with custom built digital signage screens that run maintenance free, 24 hours a day.

The Challenge
Since this landmark 5-star hotel opened in the centre of Dubai in 2000, Displaylite, working along with their Dubai-based distributor Masonlite Multimedia (MMedia), have supplied individually designed and custom-built LCD displays. Digital signage includes waterproof bathroom monitors, elevator advertising screens and digital public signage.

Having won The World's Leading Business Hotel an unprecedented 5 times, suppliers have to meet Jumeirah's exacting technical specification and standards of finish.

In 2006 MMedia were given a particularly complex brief by Jumeirah Emirates Towers. The four stand-alone LCD digital signage screens that they were to supply had to meet the following criteria:

Display content from the Hotel's existing Janus system on LCD flat panels
Free-standing and movable to enable positioning anywhere in the hotel
Match the appearance of the hotels existing glass and granite signage
Branded with the Jumeirah logo
Tamper proof in an unattended public area
To run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with zero maintenance.
Built to the same quality of finish as the hotel's existing fittings

The Method
Working closely with Displaylite, it was determined that the integration solution should use a 19" TFT panel, mounted in a glass panel set into a "stone" base that contained the Janus controller, there should be no visible wires or fixings so the screens should give the impression of "floating" in the glass.

Of great importance was the fact that the whole unit had to be stable enough that it could not be pushed or pulled over, so the design started with a 20mm thick steel ballast plate. The plate had to have a hole in the bottom for mains and data cables to enter the unit from below.

On top of the ballast plate a steel box was built to contain the Janus controller. Bolted to this box was a chrome plated steel pole which serves three functions: supports the weight of the LCD display; contains the VGA, power and OSD control cables for the display and holds the front glass in place.

A hole was cut in the front glass for the LCD display with two additional small round holes through which the rear pole is supported. The glass was then toughened, rear-sand-blasted and then screen-printed on the front with the hotel's logo. When assembled the glass rests in a groove cut in the steel base box and is held in place by the display's front bezel plus the two anchor points on the pole; in effect, when all elements are assembled, the whole unit is self-supporting.

The LCD display front bezel and casing is chrome plated, as is the rear pole and fixings. Because the TFT panel is inserted through the opening in the glass, and supported from behind, it gives the impression of hanging in the glass with power and video reaching it through no visible means. Ventilation is provided for the flat panel monitor from the rear of the casing.

Finally, a box was built to clad the steel base using a resin compound that visually resembles black granite, but without the weight and restrictions of cutting. The 'clam-shell' design cladding neatly wraps around the glass and steel box to give the impression of a solid stone box, in which the glass is sitting. The whole unit is raised slightly from the ground to enable ventilation and cable access from below.

The Results
Simon Perry from DisplayLite explains, " It is very much a working partnership with MMedia. Our combined experience meant that we surmounted any obstacles we met with in order to achieve the customer's total satisfaction in all areas of design, installation and ongoing support."

Even an experienced systems integrator such as DisplayLite found that such a challenging brief for digital signage displays meant overcoming a number of technical obstacles during manufacturing. Finally before the final assembly of all units, testing was carried out, followed by disassembly and packing in custom-built crates before shipping by airfreight to Dubai, where they were assembled on site in the Hotel in the summer of 2007.

Rob Partos from MMedia says, "As far as MMedia and the Jumeirah Emirates Towers Hotel are concerned Displaylite didn't just meet the brief given to them, they exceeded it. Testament to that is not just the incredible standard of finish of the delivered displays and the superb picture quality, but the fact that all four units have been running 24 hours a day since they were installed and look as good as the first day they were unpacked."

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Jumeirah Emirates Towers Hotel