Recent incidents have elevated the need for the hospitality industry to raise the level of security at their properties owning to security concerns. The need for a robust security and surveillance in today’s scenario has gone up significantly. The industry as a whole is challenged to increase safety and security levels, without impacting their day-to-day operations, or the guests’ experience. Recognizing this, Lemon Tree Hotels amplified the existing security measures at their upscale hotel, Lemon Tree Premier, Delhi Airport, New Delhi, by adopting NEC’s face recognition solution (FRS) which can help hospitality businesses deliver a more secure guest experience.

Owing to the hotel’s proximity to the airport which is a sensitive zone from the security point of view, this system bolsters Lemon Tree Premier’s existing security and surveillance system. NEC FRS deployed at the hotel, intelligently matches faces appearing on the hotel surveillance cameras to the criminal database provided by the Delhi Police in real time for blacklist management. This helps them prevent a criminal activity since the system is capable of updating in real time. The system can also be utilized for whitelist management offering customized service to the VIP guests at the hotel simply by recognizing their faces.

Koichiro Koide, MD, NEC India, “The technology has been added as an advanced layer to the existing security at the hotel which will ensure safety of the customers and will also help the authorities have a better control over the sensitive security zones.”

Ensuring robust security

Although the previous set up at Lemon Tree Premier was robust and secured, it had certain limitations of being manual and not real time. Situated in the Aerocity Hospitality District which is in close proximity to the international airport of the capital, Lemon Tree Premier needed to have a top-end surveillance and security system which could identify faces throughout the property with high accuracy and autogenerated alerts.

The sheer number of people visiting any hospitality property during the day makes it very tough for the security personnel to keep a tab on everyone. Thus, the surveillance of the 10-storey, 81-room Lemon Tree Premier was recognized as a significant challenge as it was difficult to track all that was happening throughout the property as it was mostly done manually. The greatest advantage of the solution lied in the fact that the hotel staff need not disturb the guests in order to verify their identity since it captures facial images from a distance.

How face recognition solution works

NEC’s face recognition technology can be implemented as a functionally independent application, or seamlessly integrated into new or existing biometric security solutions by system integrators and solution providers. The biometric solution intelligently matches faces appearing on the surveillance cameras to the database in real time for monitoring purposes.

The strength of the technology, NeoFace, lies in its tolerance of poor quality images. With high tolerance for low quality, highly compressed surveillance videos and images, including web images, the system has the capability to register and generate match results for the control of both ‘black-list’ and ‘white-list’ images using digital photographs. The captured face is compared to all facial templates in the database, irrespective of any attempts by the person to conceal identity via the usage of caps, hats, glasses or slightest change in the facial hair. This helps determine whether the person is blacklisted or a welcomed VIP customer for the particular facility.

Koide adds, “We have developed an Android/iOS-based mobile application that would help to register an individual‘s face to the backend system with ease, using the mobile phone camera. This mobile application can also show face matching alerts to the concerned security staff or to the lobby manager. If a VIP enters the hotel, the lobby manager can reach the VIP guest and give them the desired services. The security staff can also capture any suspicious person’s face image using this mobile application and check if the subject person’s face matches with any of the blacklisted individuals face in the backend database on real time.”

Elevated security measures

NEC’s face recognition solution sets a new standard for security in the hospitality sector in India with the assurance of no time gap between identification of an individual and personalized reaction on a real-time basis.

Rahul Pandit, President & Executive Director, The Lemon Tree Hotel Company says , “Safety and security of guests has always been paramount to us. At Lemon Tree Premier, Delhi Airport, it was thus essential that we adopted a solution that would merge innovative and path breaking technology with accuracy and consistency, but most importantly met the stringent guidelines defined by the Indian security agencies. We are confident that with face recognition solution deployed at the property, we will be able to provide a much improved security setup and hence better customer service at Lemon Tree Premier.“

Key benefits of the solution include enhanced security, efficiency improvements, better guest engagement, faster check-ins, etc.