Brief
Dalata Hotel Group manages a portfolio of over 50 hotels across Ireland, the UK, and Europe, primarily under the Maldron and Clayton brands, along with other affiliated properties such as The Samuel and The Gibson Hotel. They also own Club Vitae fitness clubs and operate the Red Bean Roastery and Grain & Grill franchises across their network.
Digital signage within the hotels is generally used to display daily meeting schedules, food and beverage promotions, key events, and occasional welcome messages for conference guests.
Initially, these Onelan devices were set up as standalone units and updated directly by hotel staff, with minimal oversight from the central marketing team. Dalata aimed to unify their media network, integrating over 40 Onelan players into a centralised VCMS (Virtual Content Management System) while allowing individual hotels to continue updating their meeting schedules locally. This new structure would enable greater control over displayed media, ensuring brand consistency across all digital signage.
Approach
Integrating a new CMS into an existing network is often a straightforward process in a single location, where all devices typically share the same network and VLAN. However, this project was more complex, as each hotel operates on its own local network, firewall, and public IP address. Close collaboration with Dalata’s IT provider was essential to ensure that each Onelan NTB could connect with the CMS and download build files and media.
Once the VCMS was live, we created new brand-approved layouts, user accounts, meeting schedules, weather and news feeds, and subscription channels tailored to each hotel. The next step involved remotely assessing each device to verify software versions, network status, and retrieve hotel-specific media for future redeployment. Once devices were updated to the latest software version and any issues resolved, each player was reconfigured to subscribe to the VCMS.
The final phase involved coordinating with all hotels to schedule end-user and VCMS training with the marketing team. Hotel and head office staff also received access to a dedicated SharePoint site, hosting valuable resources such as PDF user guides.
Result
With control centralised at Head Office, Dalata Hotel Group can now distribute marketing media almost instantly across its hotel portfolio, achieving faster updates while ensuring brand quality and consistency.
With ongoing support from emotion media, screen downtime has been minimised as we continue to monitor and address any issues with relevant stakeholders, often before hotel staff become aware.
Additionally, with the recent rebranding of the Clayton and Maldron brands, featuring updated colours, fonts, and logos, the centralised system allowed for a quick rollout of brand changes across all layouts, saving considerable time compared to updating each hotel individually.
