“Apple’s Enterprise Sales Group has been quietly installing thousands of iMacs, Mac minis, Mac Pros, and Xserves in hotels and cruise ships in a new push to bring the media rich experience of Apple’s retail stores to the hospitality industry, where hoteliers are seeking to deliver personalized, unique experiences that will impress guests and bring them back for more,” Prince McLean reports for AppleInsider.
“In June, Fontainebleau Resorts announced plans to install 22″ [sic] iMacs in all 1,400 rooms of its Miami Beach property now undergoing a $500 million renovation, as well as the 3,889 rooms of its new $2.9 billion, 63-story luxury resort in Las Vegas opening next year. The UK City Inn Group unveiled similar services for its hotels in Birmingham, Bristol, Glasgow, Manchester, and London, noting on its website, ‘you get what you should always expect: iMac computers, free wi-fi and Sky in every bedroom,'” McLean reports.
“Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines began installing Mac minis in its floating hotels three years ago, starting with two of its 3,600 passenger ‘Freedom Class’ ships. That includes the ‘Freedom of the Seas,’ the world’s largest passenger ship ever built. Royal Caribbean is also building an IT infrastructure from Apple’s hardware on its Solstice Class ships for Celebrity Cruises, as well as two of its own new $1.24 billion Oasis Class ships, which will accommodate at least 5,400 passengers each and assume the title of the world’s largest passenger ships when completed a year from now,” McLean reports.
“Those massive infrastructure deployments, involving up to 16,150 Ethernet drops per ship, a 10 gigabit network backbone, thousands of client Macs and racks of Xserves, are adopting Apple’s hardware for the same reasons the luxury hotels on land are: Mac hardware and software offers a differentiating end user polish while being easy to manage,” McLean reports.
Full article here.