Hilton San Diego Bayfront Hotel

Alluring and inspired by maritime culture, the distinctive coastal influence is clear the moment you arrive at the 30-story Hilton San Diego Bayfront Hotel. Located conveniently adjacent to the San Diego Convention Center, the hotel features newly renovated guest rooms that are authentically San Diego in their design.

The customer sought a new lighting solution that would reduce energy consumption and maintenance costs, while drawing guests to the hotel and establishing it as the premier hotel for tourism and area conventions.

Featured in the hotel lobby is a 12 x 60 m (40 x 200 ft) wall comprised of more than 400 1 x 2 m (3 x 6 ft) panels of beautifully frosted glass, each weighing 100 lbs. Color Kinetics partner, Pro-Cal Lighting, designed, programmed, and installed a new LED lighting system for the glass wall and for a unique architectural feature on the roof. Working overnights to avoid guest disruption and provide a seamless guest experience, over 7,000 Color Kinetics Flex LMX gen2 nodes (now specified with Flex Compact gen3, RGB) individually mapped on the Color Kinetics Light System Manager gen5 were installed in each of the wall’s glass panels. Color Kinetics Vaya Linear were used to illuminate the roof detail.

Using Interact Landmark, hotel staff can remotely control, manage, and monitor the rooftop and lobby lighting, substantially reducing on-site time and providing custom lighting effects for key customer events. Hotel guests and visitors can interact with the lighting on the south side of the glass wall from the bar to enhance their experience. The system provides maintenance alerts and conducts diagnostic scans to ensure high security and reliability and enable proactive maintenance.

The Color Kinetics system not only reduced maintenance costs, it also delivered 70% in energy savings. The customer plans to install a meter that calculates energy and cost savings every minute since the new light wall was installed. Moreover, using Flex LMX fixtures greatly reduced the number of circuits in the wall panel from 50 to 6.

The glass wall has been transformed into an immersive feature in the lobby that draws pedestrians into the hotel and provides a unique guest experience, while the new roof lighting draws attention to the hotel from afar and establishes it as a prominent area landmark.