Discreetly Tackling Guest Requests with Ease

Dream Hollywood Hotel, a boutique, 178-room lifestyle hotel tucked into the scenic Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles, California, mixes modern glam with unconventional dining and nightlife. The property, which opened its doors in 2017, boasts unparalleled views and luxury guest amenities including opulent restaurants, live performances, and the city’s swankiest rooftop pool. We chatted with Patrick Davis, the hotel’s Engineering Director to learn more about what it takes to run a luxury property and the level of team communication required to meet guests’ high standards.

Developing Trust Issues with Traditional Two-Way Radios

Prior to discovering Relay, Dream Hollywood Hotel’s teams, including engineering, housekeeping, front desk, and security, were utilizing your typical two-way radios for communications. The property faced a number of problems with these, including long delays between sending and receiving messages, low battery life capacities, and lack of durability when it came to drops. The earpieces the team utilized were also problematic, making the clarity and connectivity issues the radios were already having even worse. The team started developing trust issues with their two-way radios, not confident that messages were being delivered.

“I would just say the biggest asset of Relay is the clarity and durability of the communication because that was always an issue for us in the past. Now we have all the confidence in the world that when we need to communicate to a certain specific department, the transmission gets to them.”
– Patrick Davis, Engineering Director at Dream Hollywood Hotel.

Relay: Matching the Hotel’s Operation Style

When the director of housekeeping sent Patrick an article he had seen on Facebook about Relay, his immediate thought was, “wow, these things are amazing.” After doing his own research and due diligence, Patrick reached out to Relay to book a demo. “They did a demo for myself and the Chief Engineer and we just literally fell in love with the product.”

Everything was really well thought out. I’ve been in this industry as an engineer for 20 years. I’ve always had a two-way radio on my hip so for me, I’m thinking, this is phenomenal. That’s why I took ownership of it, because I realized the benefits of Relay.” 

– Patrick Davis, Engineering Director at Dream Hollywood Hotel.

Patrick went ahead and pitched Relay to upper management, emphasizing Relay’s numerous benefits to their style of operations. They were also impressed and the decision to switch to Relay was quickly approved. Patrick took ownership of the new communications tool – getting the indoor location beacons and Relay Dashboard set up quickly.

“My number one thing that I love about Relay is the online dashboard,” said Patrick. “Being able to see everything, make changes, and navigate through the system configuration just makes things a whole lot easier.” Patrick is logged into the dashboard daily, mainly checking for signal strengths so he can coordinate with IT if any devices are reporting low Wi-Fi in the area. He also looks at battery life to make sure everyone is charged and ready for the day, and makes sure all devices are still on property.

Exceeding Team Communication Expectations

One of the greatest benefits the team at Dream Hollywood Hotel has experienced since implementing Relay is being able to communicate privately and in smaller group sizes. “The individual calling feature is game changing to us because certain things don’t need to be communicated with everyone,” shared Patrick. “Having that privacy level of talking one-on-one to one another or in groups comes in handy if you only need to talk with 10 of the 20-30 housekeepers.”

Relay’s compact size is another big hit. Being a luxury property the team likes to handle guest requests and issues as quickly and discreetly as possible. “You don’t really see them, they blend in well with clothing so the guests don’t notice them,” said Patrick. “It’s not a big walkie-talkie on the side of your hip or anything of that nature.” The security and engineering teams also utilizes Relay’s earpieces to keep communications even more quiet. Not only are they small and lightweight but durable too, “These things bounce up, their waterproof, their indestructible,” said Patrick.

From its language translation abilities and built-in panic solution to customizable geo-fences and redundant connection, Relay has easily exceeded expectations for Patrick, “the capabilities to me and the team are limitless, that’s what was really intriguing to me.”

“You guys are really inventing the way communications should happen for industries that utilize two-way radios.”
– Patrick Davis, Engineering Director at Dream Hollywood Hotel.