Status Solutions deployed its Situational Awareness and Response Assistant (SARA) in the West 57th Street by Hilton Club. The four-star, 28-floor hotel in midtown Manhattan is using the technology to enhance life safety, giving mobile duress pendants to lone workers so they can summon help in the event of an emergency.
New York City hotel operators agreed to give hotel staff personal panic buttons as part of a long-term contract with the New York Hotel Trades Council back in February 2012. The SARA deployment at West 57th Street by Hilton Club is one of the first implementations of such technology.
Three groups – engineering, housekeeping and security -- comprised of 45 hotel staff members -- are equipped with mobile duress pendants at the start of their shifts. If a pendant is activated within the hotel or in the immediate outdoor vicinity, the SARA alerting engine automatically will send alerts to the security team on duty as well as the director of engineering via two-way radio. Alerts include the pendant ID and location data made possible by SARA's Positioning System (SPS), a built-in vector mapping capability that helps responders more quickly find the source of an alarm. If required, alerts are escalated via phone calls and emails, including to the general manager.