New York's Iconic Plaza Hotel Selects Guest-Tek to Provide State-of-the-Art Communications and Entertainment Platform
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CALGARY and NEW YORK, Jan. 29 - Guest-Tek Interactive Entertainment Ltd., ("Guest-Tek") (TSX:GTK) has announced they have been selected by Elad Properties owners of New York's landmark Plaza Hotel, and by operator Fairmont Hotels to provide Guest-Tek's OneView(TM) Media platform to provide the Plaza Hotel with free-to-guest ("FTG") Internet protocol television ("IPTV") with high-definition ("HD") programming, and HD video-on-demand ("VOD") entertainment services.
The Plaza Hotel will be opening soon after a $400 million lobby to roof renovation, including the restoration of its defining landmark public spaces such as The Palm Court, Oak Bar and Oak Room. The Plaza also includes private residences and an elegant multi-level retail collection.
Each of the 282 hotel rooms and suites can receive 60 channels of high-definition along with a large library of high-definition video-on-demand movies. Guests can use AMX touch-screen control panels to control their entertainment system, room lighting and temperature, and to order theater tickets, room service or restaurant reservations.
The guest experience at The Plaza will be seamless, a hallmark of Fairmont Hotels. All guest facing screens on the televisions, phones, and AMX panels will provide the guest with harmonized, Fairmont branded, easy to navigate menus.
"As part of the Plaza experience, we wanted to deliver a state-of-the-art entertainment system for our guests," said Miki Naftali, President and CEO of Elad Properties. "The Guest-Tek system provides a stunning high-definition experience second to none in the world."
"The ability to shape every aspect of the guest experience was critical to us for the reopening of The Plaza. We wanted to be able to define each component of the system to match the unrivalled service our guests receive at every touch point throughout the hotel. Guest-Tek was the only clear choice for us to be able to achieve our goals at The Plaza," said Shane Krige, General Manager of The Plaza Hotel.
"We are of course extremely proud to be a part of this historic project. We are always ecstatic to be able to meet the entertainment standards set by so demanding a hotel as The Plaza," said Arnon Levy, CEO of Guest-Tek. "Where hoteliers are passionate about every component of the guest experience, we find a very strong fit with our ability to provide a robust and flexible solution to meet their goals."
Guest-Tek's OneView Media(TM) HD system provides an advanced and intelligent HD set top box that supports MPEG2, MPEG4-AVC and VC-1. The OneView(TM) Media HD platform provides a complete 100% digital system able to support both IPTV, and VOD in HD and standard definition (SD) formats. Digital content is delivered securely over IP using industry standards for conditional access and content encryption featuring Advanced Encryption Standard 128-bit encryption technology, as well as aiding content protection from piracy with session based forensic watermarking. The additional value of this technology provides flexibility through a software-based approach to content protection supporting easy renew-ability, revocability, and even complete replacement - instead of costly and inflexible hardware based solutions that are dependent upon proprietary embedded hardware in the television.
ABOUT GUEST-TEK
Guest-Tek (Toronto Stock Exchange: GTK) is the world's largest provider of IP based technology solutions for the hospitality industry. Guest-Tek's OneView platform provides hotels with converged data, video and telephony services. Guest-Tek is a preferred vendor to major hotel brands, providing services including network design, procurement, implementation, and post sales customer support to over 3,066 properties and over 507,000 rooms. The company's head offices are in Calgary, Alberta, and it has major support facilities in Irvine, California, and Warsaw, Poland as well as Sales offices located throughout North America and Europe. For more information about Guest-Tek, go to www.guest-tek.com
Source: Guest-Tek Interactive Entertainment Ltd.
CONTACT: Arnon Levy, President & CEO, Guest-Tek, (403) 444-8488, arnon.levy@guest-tek.com;
Geoff Clark, CFO, Guest-Tek, (403) 444-8427, geoff.clark@guest-tek.com
