The hotel is one of 22 Clayton Hotels branded properties operated by Dalata Hotel Group plc, Ireland’s largest hotel operator, with a portfolio of 39 hotels in the UK and Ireland.

The Clayton Crown serves the local community as well providing visiting business people and tourists with generous guest rooms, an excellent service and a good range of facilities for their stay in London.

When the management at the Clayton Crown, frustrated by the patchy coverage from the mobile phones they had been using to communicate on site, decided to explore alternatives, they turned to Kenwood.

The hotel staff and management were already aware that Kenwood were involved in radio communications equipment as overseas staff and visitors to the nearby JVCKENWOOD UK Headquarters are frequent guests at the hotel.

Sometimes, even what may look to be challenging problems can be overcome by the simplest of solutions.

Holly Shackleton, Director of Sales and Marketing at the hotel mentioned their search for a remedy to communications dead-spots to a member of the JVCKENWOOD team in passing and within days, having established their requirements, a simple and cost-effective solution had been found. She reports: “None of us in the management team can claim to be experts in communication technology, but we knew that we could be operating more efficiently for the benefit of our staff and guests if we had access to instant and clear communication everywhere on the property, from the underground car park to the furthest guest room. Our concern was that we hadn’t made plans in our budget to upgrade our onsite communications and the thought of high costs, complicated equipment and service disruption played on our minds”.

Stephen Edwards, a member of the JVCKENWOOD UK technical team listened to the brief when he surveyed the site.

Initially, the requirement was for a voice communications tool to be used to provide coverage of the dead-spots, but in discussions with the hotel it became apparent that radio communications could achieve much more, Stephen explains: “It’s all too easy at times to propose solutions that far exceed the client’s requirements in anticipation of future needs, but in this case, we found that keeping it simple made best sense and the license-free PMR446 technology and the new ProTalk TK-3601D hand-portables would give the client all that they needed for a very modest outlay, specifically, compact devices that would be easy to use by anyone in team and could be adapted with accessories for discrete use – an important consideration in ‘front of house’ applications”. The Kenwood ProTalk TK-3601D dPMR446 radio weighs a mere 160g and measure just 50 x 94 x 27mm. It is supplied complete with battery, charging dock and belt clip. But the compact dimensions and light weight disguise its true capabilities for the demands of professional use.

Compact and lightweight but designed and built for professional use.

The radios can operate for a full shift on a single charge and feature voice scrambling for security, AMBE+2 Vocoder for natural sounding digital voice quality, programmable function keys, a bright display and construction to US MIL-STD Specification 810G and IP54/55/67. The real beauty however is that the digital/analogue mode is automatic on incoming calls, while the use of a second PTT (Push-To-Talk button) means that initiating a call to an analogue or digital PMR446 radio requires no more than the push of a different button; while the 16 Analogue PMR446 Frequencies and 32 dPMR446 Digital Frequencies means that it’s unlikely to be searching for frequency capacity even in the heavily congested London area. “What we have now is a business communications tool that improves our operational efficiency and safety - and that ultimately helps us to deliver a great experience to all guests”

Holly Shackleton adds: “We really like the form-factor of the radios and it was great that the radios can be used virtually straight out of the box. The fact that they are license-free means no complicated forms to complete and unlike mobile phones, no standing or call charges and most important, there are no delays in connecting to another user, you just press a button and talk instantly with great reception everywhere we need. Since our Duty Manager programmed the radios to suit our operation, we have found them to be invaluable in providing reliable communications between management and team members around the hotel, supporting different departments during busy operational days and giving our night shift, security and safety staff the reassurance that they are able to work safely and equipped to cope with emergencies without fumbling with their mobile phones and waiting for a connection.”

Holly concludes: “It’s fair to say that while initially all we wanted was communication coverage in mobile phone reception dead spots, what we have now is a business communications tool that improves our operational efficiency and safety and ultimately helps us to deliver the great experience to all guests reflected in our promise of ‘Where Every Moment Matters’.

I have no doubt we’ll be allocating budget next year to expand our fleet of Kenwood ProTalk radios to more members of the team”.