Upon landing at the Dubai International Airport, a hotel driver greets and hands you a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA). You then begin to input your preferences for breakfast or any meal, the kind of room, temperature etc. And your wish is executed on arrival at the hotel.
At the hotel, as you enter your room, your name is flashed on the TV monitor with a welcome message and the room temperature is set to your preference, your favourite music plays on the background and a chilled welcome drink awaits you as you start to unpack.
You then leave the hotel to enjoy the sights of town passing by the digital signage screen in the lobby where you download information on the various areas of interest via Bluetooth on your mobile phone.
After a full day wandering around town, you decide to head back, again hail a cab, show the driver the exact address of the hotel downloaded on to your phone and relax as he zips you back to the twisting lanes of a strange town.
In the room, you order dinner of the TV, enjoy the latest movie in HD quality and then turn in setting an alarm on your TV that offers you a choice of what channel you want to be woken up with. Next day you use the Express check out feature on the TV, saving yourself from waiting in the queue at the reception. Thus ends a great stay with a little help from technology by Deuromedia.
While out shopping at a department store, you are confused by what you should buy with the huge range available? Take a product to the Digital Signage screen and more information about it flashes in front of you, courtesy the RFID chip on each item in the store. No more grumpy sales people with scant knowledge of the product he or she is selling.
Should you want the retailer to contact you, just tap your details on the touch screen of the digital signage monitor and arrange a call back at your convenience.
"These are the technologies that will be coming sooner than later in the deluxe hotels, and up market shopping malls in the UAE and the Gulf region," said Mr. Nadeem Kooliyat, Managing Director of Roombase Deuromedia FZCO, the Dubai Airport Freezone regional office of an Austrian company. "We opened our office in the Freezone three years ago to service our clients in the region which include 75 hotels, shopping malls, banks and hospitals."
Mr. Kooliyat said his company supplies Hotel Interactive TV Systems (IPTV systems), digital telecommunications, video on demand, lobby display and digital signage solutions, and high speed broadband internet access billing system for hotels. Roombase Deuromedia has an installed base of over 500,000 hotel TV and digital signage units worldwide.
In 2010, the region served by the company will witness over 30,000 new hotel rooms coming on line of which the GCC itself will account for over 15,000 rooms. These figures form a part of the 128,000 hotel rooms that are currently under development in the Middle East and Africa.
He claims a 21 per cent market share in the Gulf market which includes hotels and malls from Lebanon to India with the UAE taking a lion's share of the installations. Year on year, the turnover of the company grew by 16% on the back of the growth in hospitality, healthcare and retail sectors.
"We provide 24/7 service support and maintenance to our clients through our online system and third party partners and technicians on the field. This is backed up by our 65 engineers in Austria who are connected in the system through our intelligent servers."
Mr. Kooliyat said his company's competitive edge is that they offer peace of mind to their clients and end to end solutions totally customized to the client needs. "Our clients can enjoy and party, assured that our equipment will work and be maintained 24/7 by our office and our partners."
Why the decision to set up shop at the Dubai Airport Freezone? "The Dubai Airport Freezone is a good launching pad for our company in Dubai; the administration is friendly and flexible. The proximity to the airport is a plus for us as we move a lot of electronics equipment and products in the region We would not consider relocating our office, at the Freezone we have easy access to our clients in the region," said Mr. Kooliyat.
Mr. Ibrahim Ahli, Director of Marketing at the Dubai Airport Freezone said, "We are proud that Roombase Deuromedia, after three years of operation within the Freezone had taken advantage of the economic opportunities offered by the UAE and Gulf countries. We work hard to meet the expectations of our tenants and we are keen to receive feedback from them to further improve support and services to facilitate them in attaining their economic goals."
There are about 473 hotels with 128000 rooms under development in the Middle East and Africa region (according to the STR Global Construction pipeline report of March 2010).
The Luxury segment accounts for over 22% of these rooms and upper upscale hotel rooms account for about 27% of these figures.
Of this, the UAE has the lion's share with more than 53,000 rooms in the active pipeline and 27,000 in the in construction phase.
This is followed by Saudi Arabia with 16,000 rooms in the active pipeline. Egypt and Qatar are next in the list with over 6,500 rooms each.
In the year 2010, the GCC should have 50 new hotel openings with a combined total of about 15,000 rooms. The total investment in these projects will be to the tune of AED 27 billion.
The rest of our markets: India, Sri Lanka, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, etc. will account for another 15,000 rooms over the next 12 months, making a total of 30,000 new rooms coming on line in the region serviced by Roombase Deuromedia FZCO out of the Dubai Airport Freezone.
