Technological transformation at Beach Palace, Blankenberge

Ubicum, founded in 2008, was originally a general IT provider, but specialised in advanced IT solutions for the hospitality industry around 2010 and is specifically very active in the hotel sector. The company offers a wide range of customised services specifically designed to enhance the digital experience for hotels and their guests.

Frederic Emmelmann, owner Ubicum: "In the hotels, we immediately had a lot of work. Because everything from analogue televisions became digital, wifi became increasingly important, as did camera systems, telephony was switched to VoIP, and so on."

"Meanwhile, we have also developed our own satellite system," Frederic continues. "With this, we can convert images from satellite to IP and then back to coax or Wi-Fi for television or a portable device. Our telephony is also specifically tailored to hotels, including wake-up calls and all kinds of call forwarding. Ubicum can actually get very close to the customer's wishes IT-wise. We can do that because we have a lot of knowledge in-house, with a punishing team of in-house developers. We link home automation to television systems and telephony to PMS systems, for example, to support the maintenance team."

"We have seen a very important evolution, especially in terms of Wi-Fi. Before, the 'access points' were simply placed in the corridor and a cable was still pulled to the rooms for each technology (coax, phone, possibly network). Of course, the latter is not only time-consuming, but also expensive. Today's technologies fortunately require only one network cable per room to which everything is connected: TV, Wi-Fi and telephony. This allows for substantial savings in both time and costs. For instance, we are now working on the preparations for the new Mövenpick hotel in Zaventem and there we were able to save on 30,000 euros worth of cables. Moreover, as houses and hotels are increasingly well insulated, wifi in the corridor is no longer an option at all. Certainly not if your - rightly demanding - customer wants to enjoy the entertainment in a normal way or work in peace of mind," Frederic says.

"Look, the bandwidth and capacity required for a strong Wi-Fi network have been growing for years. That's why we became an elite partner of Ruckus, the most widely used system in hotels. It's the best system anyway. Ruckus is really 'worry free', we have actually never had any problems with them. First of all, they are virtually indestructible. I think I now have thousands of active devices and, exceptionally, I have had to send one of them back to the manufacturer. They also work with a patented antenna system, which makes their range absolutely phenomenal. And the speeds they promise on paper are also the real speeds. Rather exceptional, I can assure you."

Frederic: "The owners of Beach Palace in Blankenberge are now on their sixth hotel, which they have bought and completely renovated. In Blankenberge, by the way, they are still working on it. We can do anything there. As in their other hotels, by the way. Beach Palace is getting new television systems (with Chromecast built in to play their own content), telephones, computer systems, including the servers for the door locks, ... We installed those television systems with the possibility of 'casting' because I assume that within here and five years linear television - watching when it is broadcast - will no longer be important in hotels. Apart from the fact that, as a hotel owner, you still have to pay a lot of money for that. Sooner or later, that will stop irrevocably. Everyone will bring their own content and want to watch it on the nice, big televisions in the rooms. By the way, this renovation challenged us to be solution-oriented and customised. In some rooms, the cabling was not renewed with the renovation, which meant a dozen TVs could not be connected by cable. We solved this with a self-developed system that allows us to transmit the images via wifi. Later, we may also tackle the entire Wi-Fi system in Beach Palace, but we are not that far yet. They take technology there very seriously, by the way, as they will try to make it a five-star hotel. And then everything, both externally and internally, has to be in perfect order, of course."