Digital CCTV Helps Hotel See Danger, Savings

-- Hotels, 1/1/2008

A few weeks before New Orleans was pummeled by Hurricane Katrina, the Holiday Inn French Quarter-Chateau LeMoyne was the victim of an early-morning armed robbery. Despite the presence of a security camera, the perpetrator never was identified. It was then that General Manager Kathleen Young decided it was time for an upgrade to digital closed-circuit television, or CCTV.

“We looked at our old security camera, and it was a 6-year-old system, one of those old technologies that took a snapshot every 15 seconds,” Young says. “When we watched the snapshots, there was one where the night auditor was perfectly fine, then the next picture had the robber with a gun to his head, and the next shot he was gone. It was worthless to the police.”

Young called DefenderTech International Solutions, which installed its digital InSight CCTV system at the property—just before the hurricane hit. Despite an evacuation and several weeks operating only on auxiliary power, the InSight system never failed. “It was the only thing in the hotel that did work,” Young says.

Once Young and a team of maintenance and security personnel returned to the property, the 12-camera InSight system gave staff the peace of mind to work around the clock to repair the hotel and return it to operation, even as nighttime anarchy reigned in the surrounding neighborhoods.

“It enabled us to get our work done without having to worry about what was going on outside, because we could see it on our security system,” Young says. As a result, the hotel was able to reopen five weeks after the storm, making it among the first hotels in New Orleans to do so.

In the subsequent two years, InSight has paid for itself several times over by providing visual evidence refuting false guest claims, Young says. Visitors to the French Quarter tend to imbibe more alcohol than they probably should, which can lead to an inordinate number of misunderstandings and incorrect memories. InSight’s archival search allows hotel staff to quickly access video from a specific time and location.

“Sometimes, people will come down the next morning and say something like Spiderman must have scaled the wall and stolen their wallet from their room,” Young says. “So we’ll go to the tape and show them that they came back at 3 a.m. to the hotel lobby and asked for a new key with their new friend Spiderman, and they’ll say, ‘Oh, yeah, it’s all coming back to me now…’”

Young uses the InSight system to keep an eye on employees as well, making sure they stay on task and that their interactions with guests are appropriate. Because it is digital, real-time video can be viewed on computer monitors off-site, as well. New Orleans police even frequent the property more often now, because cameras trained on the hotel’s exterior areas provide visual clues to incidents in the surrounding area. Guests and employees alike are keenly aware of Chateau LeMoyne’s newfound reputation for superior security, which Young credits with helping to draw business and retain staff.