News

Hotel chain books digital signage for corporate HQ

Choice Hotels, the corporate parent of several hotel chains in the U.S., recently booked Tightrope digital signage for corporate communications, according to an announcement from Tightrope Media Systems.

September 24, 2014

Choice Hotels, the corporate parent of several hotel chains in the U.S., recently booked Tightrope digital signage for corporate communications, according to an announcement from Tightrope Media Systems.

Choice Hotels relocated its Maryland headquarters to the northern Washington, D.C., suburb of Rockville, where it occupies six floors of a newly built 10-story building, with a second corporate location in Phoenix. With various conference spaces and thoroughfares to communicate across, Choice Hotels turned to systems integrator Human Circuit Inc. to design a complete professional AV system with a dynamic and interactive digital signage network from Tightrope Media Systems.

According to the announcement, Tightrope's Carousel solution was selected for its interactive flexibility that allows Choice Hotels to customize outputs depending on the nature of the message for each location. The network serves three main corporate communication purposes: interactive wayfinding, historical education and general information for visitors and personnel. The open nature of Carousel also has helped incorporate business operations, such as Outlook integration for real-time scheduling of meetings and events, the company said.

"We work with a number of signage companies and representatives for many different manufacturers," said Kevin Filano, systems design engineer for Human Circuit, in the announcement. "Tightrope was an ideal choice for this project because Carousel is highly customizable, which was important given the targeted content across different locations. Their layouts are non-cluttered and elegantly designed, which works great for a corporate environment. Tightrope makes sure the end-user can display the right amount of information without making it look too busy, while retaining a smooth and professional look."

The overall Carousel architecture for Choice Hotels uses a virtual server cluster with intelligent software to drive content instead of a central computer. The network now extends to the Phoenix corporate location, with similar content created, managed and driven from the Rockville headquarters, where Carousel's remote capabilities also enable network-wide troubleshooting from a central location, the company said. The scalable Carousel backbone ensures that Choice Hotels can expand to additional displays at the Phoenix location without significantly driving up costs, labor or operational complexity, according to Tightrope.