Dubai hotels create vibrant visual identity
With their graceful, curved architecture, vibrant exterior lighting, and towering height (35 and 19 floors, respectively), the InterContinental and Crowne Plaza hotels have dominated the skyline of Dubai Festival City, Dubai, United Arab Emirates, since their grand openings in 2007. Because of recurring failures in the more than 2 km (1 mi) of static façade lights rimming the hotels, the owners turned in 2010 to a long-term, sustainable retrofit solution from Color Kinetics to maintain and strengthen the hotels' iconic visual identity.
The goal of the retrofit project was fourfold: to minimize maintenance costs, reduce energy consumption, cut down on heat generated from the inefficient lamps used in the hotel's interior, and provide a reliable, low-maintenance alternative to the cold-cathode technology currently in use in the buildings' exterior façade lights.
While assessing possible solutions, Signify associates discovered that the project had multiple stakeholders, including third-party contractors and integrators, and that the hotels' owners didn't have the manpower to manage such a complex process. To solve this problem, a Signify team of technical, design, finance, and legal managers put together a comprehensive package designed to simplify the lighting solution and address the client's needs.
For the project's first phase, Signify performed a lighting audit to identify opportunities for switching to energy-saving solutions. In outdoor lighting, a feasibility study identified Color Kinetics LED iColor Accent Powercore (now specified using iColor Accent MX Powercore), a direct-view linear LED luminaire, as the perfect alternative to replace the cold cathode system. The study chose these luminaires for their comparable light intensity, long source life, and low maintenance requirements. Controlled by the powerful, Ethnernet-based Light System Manager controller, this exterior solution allows for programmable, shifting colors, creating opportunities for the hotels to participate in any event taking place within Dubai Festival City.
Inside the hotels, energy-efficient Signify lighting products were used to retrofit the more than 35,000 existing light points. Together with the new façade lighting, the retrofit is predicted to help save the hotels approximately 80% of their annual energy costs for lighting, while enhancing the ambiance and majesty of these landmarks.
Tom Meyer, Director of Operations at InterContinental Hotel Group (IHG) Dubai and Area General Manager of IHG Dubai Festival City, reflected on the success of the installation. "Together with Signify, InterContinental and Crowne Plaza Dubai Festival City Hotels replaced their entire exterior façade lighting with an energy-efficient LED system. Interchanging the cold-cathode installations on the façade and the incandescent bulbs and halogen spots inside the hotel with Signify state-of-the-art LED and other energy-efficient products will reduce CO2 emissions of the hotels by almost 2,000,000 kg (4.4 million lbs) per year. In addition, the reduction in electricity bills and maintenance costs that the energy-saving bulbs achieve will offset the investment in the project in less than 42 months."
When the new exterior lighting system debuted in 2010 with a spectacular evening light show over the Dubai Creek, it further solidified InterContinental and Crowne Plaza hotels' reputations as landmarks of luxury in this iconic city. This energy-efficient lighting solution has since helped the hotels set the benchmark for the region's best practice in green technology.
