Contributed by ELLIS BOOKER |
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Two exciting technological transformations are happening inside the 124-year-old walls of Badrutt ’ s Palace Hotel in St . Moritz , Switzerland . In January , the Badrutt family announced plans to install 5G wireless technology at the property , making it the first luxury hotel in Europe to do so . The 5G project came on the heels of the hotel deploying optical fiber to some of its 157 rooms , providing high-speed networking to TVs , phones and thermostats .
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“ When we had an opportunity to do a vertical , three-floor renovation , we saw we could rethink the house core ,” explains Richard Leuenberger , managing director of Badrutt ’ s Palace . He was surprised to discover that bringing a fiber backbone into the rooms , and then using in-room fiber optic switches to connect to various room devices over ethernet , wasn ’ t more expensive than conventional data wiring .
Indeed , infrastructure upgrades are
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nothing new at the 5-star mountain resort , located 6,000 feet up in the Swiss Alps . In 1879 , Johannes Badrutt placed an electrical plan in St . Moritz , bringing the first electric light in Switzerland to illuminate the restaurant in his hotel .
SPEED ON THE SLOPES To leverage the new , high-speed fiber inside the building , the hotel partnered with Swiss telecommunications and IT provider Swisscom . Along with an array of 5G
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Top : Badrutt ’ s had the first electric lighting system in Switzerland . Left : Smartphone for guest use |
May 2020 hotelsmag . com 47 |