Hilton Hotel, Reading

The modern Hilton Hotel in Reading, Berkshire is home to two of Baldwin Boxall’s systems – a Mitre public address system and an Omnicare disabled refuge system. The design and installation of both systems was carried out by Trinity Protection Systems, Oxford.

The EVC System:

• Two networked panels
• Separate alert beacon mounted in reception to monitor calls when control panel is unattended
• Disabled refuge outstation
• Disabled toilet alarms

The Public Address System:

• 16 zones
• Zoned background muic
• Live broadcast facilities
• Spot announcement ability
• Stored messages
• Message record facility

The Project:

The calm atmosphere of the hotel, which opened in May, is enhanced by the zoned background music facility of the public address (PA) system. The sixteen zone PA system includes a total of seven CD/MP3 players, which provide sound to selected areas. This allows the hotel management team to create different ambience in selected areas. With 210 bedrooms, health centre and the largest ground floor conference facilities in the area, this is a useful feature.

The two BDM416 sixteen zone microphones enable live broadcast to zones selected by the operator, with a BDM401 microphone providing an ‘all call’ facility for the Maitre d’hotel. Additionally, a digital spot announcer enables the recording and playback of up to sixteen stored messages. Over thirty minutes of recordings can be stored on the unit which can be prepared off-line and downloaded via a USB connection.

The OmniCare disabled refuge system, installed in the hotel, features two 32-way control panels (one master and one slave), ten disabled refuge area remote units and twelve disabled toilet alarms. OmniCare enables the monitoring of both the disabled refuge remote units and the disabled toilet alarms at a single panel – creating one point of reference. An additional beacon has been placed on the reception desk, connected via the control panel’s volt free contact facility. This alerts staff immediately to a call should one be made during a time when the area is particularly busy or noisy.

Colin Smith, South East Regional Sales Manager for Trinity Protection Systems, commented “This has been a really nice project for us. As is often the case, I first saw the hotel only on paper as a collection of drawings and it has been a pleasure to see the finished result. We were delighted to win the contract and, as always, found Baldwin Boxall to have the ideal solution to bring this prestigious hotel to life.”

Richard Finn, Operations Manager, Hilton Reading, said of the project “Trinity have been very professional throughout and we are very pleased with the quality of the systems that have been installed”.