Moored at London’s Royal Victoria Dock, The Sunborn Yacht Hotel is 142-metres of floating luxury.
Originally dropping anchor in 2003, the hotel was upgraded to a second-generation vessel in 2016 with even more rooms and events spaces, and even more flexible requirements.
Sunborn pioneered the original floating hotel concept in 1998 and has since created a number of bespoke Yacht Hotels for prestigious international locations.
Currently they remain the only company in the world to successfully construct a fleet of fully functioning, first-class Yacht Hotels.
While looking to provide more sustainable products with its new builds, Sunborn are also working to retrofit its existing fleet. We were welcomed on board to overhaul The Sunborn Yacht Hotel, London’s aging audio network.
The boat was still using its original audio system and was only partially operating as a network. Each of the six decks had multiple zones to address and working around the existing infrastructure would not be the only challenge. The existing speakers were custom finished for the boat, gold plated to match the décor, meaning our specified solution would need to be compatible with these speakers.
We were required to not only design and install a complete system with wall controllers, background music sources, and a paging system, but also one which could be serviced, managed, and maintained by non-technical personnel.
The Sunborn Yacht Hotel contains several flexible spaces, all the ship’s corridors have multiple speakers, and there is a restaurant area plus three conference rooms which can combine to become much bigger spaces. Therefore, when installing the wall controllers in each of these spaces, the option to combine in different ways and play out in multiple zones was essential.
We opted for an open-architecture system with Symetrix as a starting point, and to ensure the system was expandable in the future, we combined this with a full Dante system.
Reception was provided full control over the entire boat, and an existing aging system was connected to the new Symetrix solution to address fire drill and evacuation requirements. The system is flexible and expandable to allow for additional features to be installed at a later stage, like Bluetooth wall plates to stream music via a phone, and wireless connectivity for projection systems.
At the core of the system is the Symetrix Prism 16, fully equipped with 64x64 Dante channels to provide multi-channel audio networking over IP. With a standard 1U form factor, the Prism was easily accommodated into the venue’s existing racking, while a range of control options made control of the ship’s multiple zones straightforward and adaptable.
Meanwhile, Dante connectivity provides greater scope for compatible third-party equipment to be integrated to further future-proof the installation.
When it comes to control, the specified system makes it simple for Sunborn Yacht Hotel staff to see what can be selected in each area, along with four selectable background music sources connected on the rack side of the system.
Being able to adapt the existing infrastructure without impacting on the public usability of Sunborn Yacht Hotel, the Symetrix system provides an infrastructure which is not only flexible enough for the present, but also expandable for the future.
