Four Seasons Hotel - Anahita, Mauritius

Introduction

Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts specialises in providing luxury for its guests, and the new development by Ciel Properties in Mauritius exemplifies the luxury expected of the marque. In a parallel development, luxury villas are being built on the same site and sold or leased to individuals. These are of a similar fit-out standard, yet are tailored for a slightly more hands-on living style than the hotel.

The developers commissioned Capita Symonds as consulting engineers for the mechanical and electrical services, including the electronics. The latter was handled by the Technology Division in the form of IT network infrastructure as well as the provision of telephony, web access and on-demand entertainment services. In turn, the company’s Acoustics Division, whose Venue Technology section was headed by Steve Jones, dealt with the sound and AV, plus TV distribution. Capita Symonds now has an office in Mauritius which services this and other projects, with base services provided from the U.K. Since Steve’s formation of Steve Jones Associates, SJA has been engaged as a sub-consultant to the team.

Involvement

Many of the Four Seasons Hotels are located in city centres and are predominantly vertical in shape. Since their locations suit them to hosting conferences, exhibitions and conventions, they are equipped with a base specification for electronics provision – helping to create a reassuringly consistent look and feel across their range of hotels, a fact appreciated by the company’s regular international clients.

The hotel in Mauritius is very different, comprising predominantly single-storey buildings across a huge campus, surrounded by the lapping waters of the Indian Ocean. This wide distribution of buildings meant that the provision of centrally-distributed TV and background music signals was hampered by distance. The solution was to use digital technology extensively in the system design (a principle also employed in Steve Jones’ design for Ascot Racecourse - another huge site). TV signals are designed to be carried over the IT network as IPTV, while the sound is carried over the same digital network to remote control hubs located around the campus.

The ‘standard’ AV facilities in the Conference and Meeting Rooms are designed to be just that, yet the extra emphasis on a base IT Network gives clients a faster and easier route to global communications between Mauritius and other parts of their organisation, should global conferencing and WAN access be required.