Case Study

Keeping staff and guests safe, the easy® way

About easyHotel

easyHotel® is part of the easy® family of brands. easyHotel was founded in 2004 as a “super budget” hotel group, opening its first hotel in South Kensington, London, in 2005.

easyHotel has been successful in winning new franchise contracts and opening its directly owned hotels, with an estate of 43 hotels, totalling 4,000+ rooms. 27 hotels are franchised (2,300 rooms) and 16 are owned hotels (2,000 rooms) across 11 countries. They employ 327 employees across their owned estate.

easyHotel’s requirements

Applewood were contacted by easyHotel because their existing solution was proving taxing with signal and battery issues. They also identified that there was a need for a panic alarm, their current one being a costly, hard-wired solution.

Their key requirements included:

  • Simple to use with proven escalation procedure in place.
  • Low maintenance and easy to charge/see when battery is low.

Reliable and makes staff feel safe whilst on shift with extra reassurance that police will be called when required.

Our solution

Applewood presented a solution with Oysta products; SenseCare, Oysta Badge, a device management platform, IntelliCare™ while incorporating monitoring partner, Custodian.
Oysta Badge is shaped like an ID badge, with discreet buttons on the back. It has a discreet one-touch SOS button, two-way voice calling and transmits its GPS location. It was configured so that when an SOS alarm is raised, that Custodian used the two-way voice calling feature to covertly listen to the situation so they can assess the need without compromising the staff member’s safety. They can direct help to their location if needed.

Osta-Badge

Oysta Badge

SenseCare is a non-wired panic alarm. It can easily be affixed to a discreet location and works out of the box. It has a battery life of two years and uses mobile data (NB-IoT) to transmit an SOS alert. NB-IoT SIMs support long battery life and gives better data coverage than the standard mobile SIM. It means it can be an effective, wireless panic alarm.
SenseCare

SenseCare

The Oysta Badge and SenseCare are monitored by an Alarm Receiving Centre (ARC), Custodian. Their team is available 24/7/365 for responses. easyHotel determined the escalation points before the devices were installed and Custodian activate those escalation points, asses the SOS status and appoint an emergency response if it is needed.

IntelliCare is Oysta’s device management platform which allows easyHotel’s health and safety team to see the whole estate of devices, location of devices, their status, and any activations so they can produce high level reports on trends, usage and alarm activations to help assess their hotel’s risk levels. Each Hotel Manager has access for their own branch of hotel, so they see trends that ascertain to their own hotel, manage, and identify risks. Since IntelliCare integrates with any ARC software, Custodian can easily locate the device that triggered the alert and respond accordingly, while directing help to their location if needed.

IntelliCare

Intellicare

Applewood demoed the solutions to easyHotel who were thrilled for an easy, flexible and reliable solution.

“Feedback from the Croydon team is that the response times from Custodian the alarm monitoring company are very quick, the device and panic buttons are easy to use, and the portable badge is very helpful.

They also really like the man down function [on the Oysta Badge] and have stated it works better and makes them feel safer than the previous lone working device.” Katie Mather, Health and Safety Manager.

Outcome

Initially, the pilot took place in Croydon for one month before being deemed successful and installed into the remaining 14 sites.

Before the pilot commenced, a mobile network survey was carried out to ensure that there would be suitable coverage for the Oysta Badge and SenseCare panic alarm as they both use mobile data to transmit their location and alerts. Safety parameters including escalation procedures were established and pre-set before the devices were delivered to site.

The project role out had one SenseCare panic alarm on the reception desk and two ‘pooled’ Oysta Badge devices for staff who are on shift, on-site but may not be inside the hotel.

During the pilot, it was identified that two SenseCare panic alarms would give a better coverage; one for the front desk and one for the back office. SenseCare does not require to be hard-wired, so it is very easy to move them to different locations if needed.

The installation process was simple as the devices were pre-configured and tested before sending to site. Once the devices were delivered to site, they were unboxed, test calls conducted and in the case of SenseCare, affixed to the right location.

Full training was delivered on IntelliCare™, remotely by Oysta to the Health and Safety team and Hotel Managers.

 Katie says, “Staff safety is paramount, and we are happy we now have a solution which makes our teams feel happier and safer when in the hotels.”

Adam Chalkly at Applewood, says, “Having been approached by easyHotel after they piloted a similar system from a national well known security company, I knew that our personal approach and the capabilities of the Oysta solution would not only meet the customers’ needs but provide them with ongoing flexibility. With a system such as this that offers unique solutions in an overcrowded market, it was important to me that Oysta was involved at the very start of the journey. I wanted to ensure that easyHotel was confident of the systems promised capabilities, and that Oysta was on hand to offer guidance to us and easyHotel through each stage. Having worked with similar but far more limited systems in the past, I am delighted that we are able and continue to offer Oysta solutions to our customers.”

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