Modernizing Physical Security Across 100+ Hotels

Cloud video surveillance rolled out property by property, and managed from one place.

Background

Our client is a major hotel group operating one of the largest portfolios in Canada, spanning a wide range of brands, property sizes and locations. Each hotel runs around the clock, with guests, staff and contractors moving through public areas, back-of-house corridors, parking and loading zones at every hour.

Physical security in an estate that size tends to grow property by property. Systems get installed at different times, by different contractors, to whatever standard applied on the day, and the result is a portfolio where no two hotels work quite the same way.

Programme: December 2024 to present, rolling out property by property.

The Challenge

The estate had reached the point where its camera systems were holding the business back rather than protecting it:

Ageing, isolated systems. Recorders sitting in back offices, each one a separate island with its own login, its own settings and its own failure mode.
No central visibility. Head office had no practical way to see across the portfolio, or to confirm that a given hotel’s cameras were even recording.
Inconsistent retention. Footage was kept for different lengths of time at different properties, which is a problem when an incident surfaces weeks later.
Slow incident review. Retrieving footage often meant someone attending the property in person and working through an unfamiliar system.
Maintenance burden. On-site recorders fail, fill up and fall out of date, and every one of them is a device someone has to look after.

What NetraClouds Delivered

NetraClouds modernized the physical security posture across 100+ hotels, standardising both the cameras and the platform behind them.

Camera installation at every property, coverage designed per site around entrances, public areas, back-of-house routes, parking and loading points.
Eagle Eye Cloud VMS deployed as the single video management platform across the portfolio.
A consistent build per hotel, the same naming, camera settings and retention policy applied everywhere, so any property behaves the way the last one did.
Structured cabling and network work carried out as part of the same visit, rather than left as a separate trade to coordinate.
Documentation and handover for each site, so the systems can be supported by people who were not there when they went in.

Why Eagle Eye Cloud VMS

A cloud video platform suits a distributed hotel estate for reasons that matter operationally, not just technically:

One place to look. Every property is reachable from a browser or phone, so reviewing an incident does not require travelling to the hotel.
Less on-site equipment. Removing the reliance on a recorder in every back office removes a device that ages, fails and needs managing at 100+ locations.
Retention set centrally. Footage is kept to one agreed policy across the portfolio instead of whatever each site happened to be configured for.
Access under control. Permissions are granted per user and per property, and can be withdrawn centrally when someone changes role or leaves.
Updates handled by the platform. Security patching of the video system is not another job for hotel staff or a site visit.

NDAA-Compliant Equipment

Every camera specified for this rollout, and the Eagle Eye Cloud VMS platform behind them, is NDAA compliant, meaning the equipment is free of the video surveillance components prohibited under Section 889 of the US National Defense Authorization Act.

That matters more in hospitality than people expect:

Government and defence travellers. Hotels carrying government per-diem or defence-related business are increasingly asked what surveillance equipment is installed on the property.
Corporate procurement. Large corporate accounts review their suppliers’ security estates, and prohibited equipment can put an account at risk.
Avoiding a second rip-out. Non-compliant cameras have to be replaced when a contract requires it, paying for the same installation twice.
Supply-chain assurance. The restrictions exist because of the risk that video equipment introduces into a network. Choosing compliant hardware is a security decision before it is a paperwork one.

Specifying compliant equipment from the start meant the portfolio was brought up to standard once, rather than revisited later when a client or contract demanded it.

Delivering Across 100+ Properties

The hard part of a project like this is not the technology, it is doing the same job more than a hundred times, in working hotels, without disrupting guests.

Multiple sites in parallel. Our field teams run concurrent installations across regions, which is what keeps a rollout of this size to a sensible timeline.
Work scheduled around operations. Installation in public areas was planned around occupancy and quiet hours so guest experience was not affected.
One point of contact. Head office dealt with a single team for the whole programme rather than coordinating a contractor per property.
Repeatable process. Each site followed the same survey, install, test and handover steps, so quality did not depend on which crew attended.

The Outcome

The group moved from a collection of independent, ageing camera systems to a single, consistent security platform across 100+ hotels.

Portfolio-wide visibility from one interface, instead of a separate system per property.
Incident footage retrievable without sending someone to the hotel.
One retention standard applied across every site.
Fewer pieces of ageing on-site hardware to maintain, replace and secure.
A documented, repeatable build that new properties can be brought onto as the portfolio changes.
NDAA-compliant equipment throughout, so the estate meets the procurement standards corporate and government accounts ask about.

If you are responsible for security across a multi-site estate and recognise the problem, different systems everywhere, no central view, footage that is hard to get hold of, we would be glad to talk about what the same approach would look like for your portfolio.

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Talk to our experts about your needs by calling +1 (647) 725-9693 or book a free 30-minute consultation.

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