Maritim Hotel Düsseldorf chooses Epson projectors

The Düsseldorf branch of the Maritim hotel chain is the largest conference hotel in North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany. Perfect presentation is very important in the conference rooms due to the large number of events that take place there every year.

The Maritim Hotel Dusseldorf has a total of 33 meeting rooms, of which the Maritim Hall seats around 2,500 people, and the Düsseldorf Hall seats 1,000. The conference hotel hosts around 2,500 events every year, including conferences, conventions and trade fairs, as well as festivals such as large TV, dance and carnival events.

In order to live up to the hotel's reputation and the high demands of visitors, the Maritim relies on both state-of-the-art technology and its team of three event technicians, with Sebastian Kreuels as Head of Department. The team is not only responsible for maintenance, but is also on-call for entire events when required.

Sebastian Kreuels explains that, "Our goal is to be constantly up-to-date with the latest technology. Additionally, the requirements for our AV and audio systems are high - some of them run around-the-clock - so we have to replace the permanently installed projectors in our two largest halls, the Maritim Hall and the Düsseldorf Hall, every three to four years. We have been using Epson equipment here since 2013. The quality of the mobile projectors for smaller meeting rooms is what won us over. In addition, Epson has made a name for itself in the event technology industry in recent years."

It's no surprise then, that Epson solutions were chosen when the permanent installation projectors had to be replaced in the two large halls, Maritim and Düsseldorf, in 2016. The set of requirements for the new devices was extensive; among other things, maintenance effort and energy consumption should be as low as possible, the quality of presentation should naturally be as sophisticated as possible, even in daylight.

The Maritim team of technicians decided to use Epson projection technology due to the multitude of advantages offered by Epson LCD laser projection. Different projectors underwent comparative tests. Finally, the Epson EB-L1505U was chosen as, with its 12,000 lumens, it provides a very bright picture in natural colours. It is also possible to present a high-quality picture without darkening the room in daylight. "This was a problem until now, as we've had a whole series of daytime events," explains Sebastian Kreuels. "The long-life of the lamps also won us over. Epson guarantees them for 20,000 hours and five years, respectively. Until now, we incurred an annual cost of around 2,300 euros to change the lamps, which we can now save. Finally, the Epson systems, with their compact design, fitted nicely into the existing lifts - the other test candidates were mostly too large."

Two Epson laser projectors were permanently installed in the large Maritim Hall, and one in the Düsseldorf Hall. Sebastian Kreuels finds the flexible application possibilities of the projectors a useful necessity, due to the multitude of different events in the hotel. Flexibility extends to the extensive connectivity options offered by the Epson laser projectors, including a high-performance HDBaseT connector. Since the hotel uses screens of various sizes, all three projectors are equipped with lenses with which the image size can be adapted to the appropriate projection area.

"There are occasional inquiries as to whether presentations on irregularly shaped walls or ceilings and other materials are possible," explains the head of event technology. "Thanks to features such as edge blending and lens shift, this is now possible with our new Epson laser projectors without any distortion." Lens settings can be saved, which saves time. It's also possible to control the OSD functions of the projectors over the network using tablets.

Overall, Sebastian Kreuels is very happy that the new Epson projectors were the right choice for the Maritim Düsseldorf. "In addition to the other practical features, both we and our guests were won over by the great, detailed picture quality and realistic colour presentation, which is also important for the correct presentation of CI colours."