At a Glance
| Customer | Milan Suite Hotel, part of Planetaria Hotels |
| Industry | Hospitality (boutique four-star, all-suite hotel) |
| Location | Milan, Italy |
| Property | 57 junior suites in a building more than 100 meters (about 330 ft) long, with multiple guest, supplier and garage access points and entrances shared with neighboring buildings. |
| Partner | Hitech Madness, a March Networks Certified Solution Provider, which designed, installed and maintains the system. |
| Challenge | The Milan Suite Hotel, a boutique four-star property, occupies a single building more than 100 meters (about the length of a football field) long, with external corridors, large emergency stairwells, and multiple entrances, some shared with neighboring buildings. Covering all of it with a small front-desk team, while keeping watch on the areas guests should not enter, called for a more complete and intelligent video solution. |
| Solution | Working with March Networks Certified Solution Provider Hitech Madness, the hotel deployed about 50 March Networks cameras: EL5 motorized-zoom domes, AI4 analytic cameras and discreet C12 360° cameras. All video records to a single Command X-Series (X64) recorder, is viewed through March Networks Command, and ties into the group’s wider Command Enterprise system, with AI4 analytics driving real-time alerts tailored to the building. |
| Results | The hotel now has a single, real-time view of almost the entire property, with custom alerts at the front desk, sharp video day and night, and police-ready footage retrieval in 10 minutes or less, all while meeting Italy’s strict privacy and retention rules. |
| Technology Suite |
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When you run a boutique hotel that stretches more than 100 meters (about 328.08 ft) end to end with a small front-desk team, keeping watch over every corridor, stairwell and entrance is no small task. For Lisa Dalpasso, Quality & Innovation Manager at Planetaria Hotels group, the goal was clear: gain complete visibility across the property without taking staff away from looking after guests.
Part of the Planetaria Hotels group, the Milan Suite Hotel is an all-suite, four-star property that Planetaria has owned and managed since 2012. The hotel’s 57 spacious junior suites, each at least 45 square meters, sit in a single building that is about the length of a football field, with several access points for guests, suppliers and the garage, and some entrances are shared with neighboring buildings. That layout gives the hotel its character, but it also makes the property hard to watch over.
Planetaria knows the value of good video. For more than 20 years, the company has built a portfolio of luxurious four- and five-star hotels across Italy and has standardized on March Networks technology at eleven of its twelve properties. So, when the Milan Suite Hotel set out to convert former storage space into new suites about a year ago, it was the right moment to upgrade and expand the hotel’s video coverage too.
The challenge: covering a long, complex property with a small team
With just 57 rooms, the Milan Suite Hotel runs lean, and its long layout made it hard to keep an eye on everywhere at once. Guest rooms open onto an external corridor, and large emergency stairwells run up both sides of the building. The team needed to close those gaps, and to know the moment someone turned up where they shouldn’t, especially at emergency exits and doors meant to stay shut, all without pulling staff away from guests.
“With a building more than 100 meters long and premium junior suites, we cater to high-end guests who deeply value safety, particularly those traveling with families,” said Lisa. “The real challenge was to ensure total property visibility and preserving a safe, secure environment and the upscale atmosphere of the hotel without intrusive hardware everywhere.”
A solution built around the property
Working from the building’s floor plans, March Networks and its certified partner, Hitech Madness, mapped out exactly which areas needed coverage, then matched the right camera to each one. Because the hotel has so many different spaces, from entrances and corridors to the garage, the design brought together several March Networks camera families. EL5 motorized-zoom domes cover the corridors, entrances, and outdoor areas. AI4 cameras add built-in video analytics where the hotel needs intelligent detection. And discreet C12 360° cameras provide wide coverage in the lobby and other large spaces, where a single camera does the work of three to five.
All of the video records to a single March Networks Command X-Series (X64) recorder and is viewed through the Command Client at the front desk, giving staff a view of almost the entire property at once. The recorder ties into Planetaria’s wider Command Enterprise system, hosted at the group’s flagship Enterprise Hotel in Milan.
The upgrade took two to three months, with the team replacing almost all of the old cameras and installing the new recorder. Only a couple of existing license-plate cameras at the garage entrance were kept and folded into the new system, a good example of how March Networks can bring older and third-party devices onto one platform.
“There was no off-the-shelf answer for a building like this. We designed the camera placement and the alert rules around the property itself, and the March Networks platform gave us the flexibility to bring it all onto one system,” said Gioele Colombi, Founder & CEO of Hitech Madness.
Custom alerts that protect guests and staff
One of the biggest reasons that teams chose March Networks is the ability to tailor alerts to the hotel’s layout. Using the analytics built into the AI4 cameras, the system keeps watch on the emergency stairwells and the doors that should stay closed, and sends a real-time alert the moment someone moves into an area they shouldn’t. Because the analytics confirm a real person is present before triggering, false alarms stay low. The rules run mainly overnight, and alerts appear on a dedicated monitor at reception, so the night staff can see exactly which camera and area is involved and respond right away.
“If anyone is somewhere in the building where they’re not supposed to be, we get an alert right at the front desk and can send someone to check,” said Lisa.
The alerts protect guests as much as the property. Now the team can step in quickly and politely, using alarm rules that were set up to match the way the hotel works.
Clear video, day and night
Image quality after dark was another priority. Several emergency exits open onto external emergency stairways, and those areas, like the rest of the perimeter, are only dimly lit at night. The hotel’s old nighttime video had been poor quality, which made the main entrance and outdoor areas hard to watch. The new EL5 and AI4 cameras handle low light well and deliver sharp images around the clock. For Lisa, it is a night-and-day difference: clear views at any hour, in any weather.
Privacy and compliance built in
The system was set up to meet Italy’s strict privacy and data-retention rules. In the Command software, front-desk staff have live access only to a handful of areas that need round-the-clock monitoring, primarily the main entrance and the garage. Recorded video is kept for a maximum of 72 hours, in line with Italian regulations, and the authorities can be given access to footage when they need it.
Fast, police-ready video retrieval
Thankfully, the Milan Suite Hotel has not had any serious incidents inside over the past years. The system is very helpful to the police, who occasionally request footage of events at the entrance or just outside the hotel. Given a time frame, the hotel’s IT team can find and export the exact moment in 10 minutes or less, using the everyday search tools in Command.
“Our system is fully aligned with GDPR, ensuring restricted and secure data handling. When authorized data retrieval is required, the platform enables our IT team to locate and export the exact minute needed in no more than 10 minutes, proving to be an incredibly reliable and compliant tool,” said Lisa.
The team also drew on what worked at other Planetaria properties, placing C12 360° cameras throughout the garage and lobby. Beyond security, that wide coverage helps with liability: if a car is damaged, the footage can show what happened and who was responsible, which is useful for both guest relations and insurance. And because the C12 sits flush in the ceiling and is very discreet, it is a perfect fit for a four-star hotel, where obvious hardware would feel out of place.
A trusted, long-term partnership
Planetaria Hotels has worked with Hitech Madness and March Networks for more than 15 years, and the Milan Suite Hotel project shows how that relationship has evolved. Because March Networks can mix different generations of cameras and select third-party devices, each property can improve its video at its own pace instead of replacing everything at once, something that has proven especially helpful as Planetaria has taken on new hotels. The group runs everything centrally through Command Enterprise at the Enterprise Hotel in Milan, with local teams seeing only what they need at their own site. Over time, the goal is to bring every Planetaria hotel onto March Networks technology.
For Lisa, who followed the project from start to finish, working with the March Networks team was the highlight. “The experience was amazing,” she said.
“They explained everything without being too technical, so I understood the features and could say exactly what we needed. I’d do it all again. And whenever we need to renew or add something, March Networks is who we’ll go to.”
Ready to gain complete visibility across your properties? Talk to March Networks about a video surveillance solution tailored to your site.
About March Networks
As a leading provider of IP video software and systems, March Networks works with certified partners and customers worldwide to transform video into usable business intelligence, giving them the tools they need to enhance security, mitigate risk, and reduce losses from theft and fraud. Learn more at marchnetworks.com.
