With its white sandy beaches, year-round sunshine, and bustling nightlife, Cancun is one of Mexico’s biggest tourist destinations, attracting more than 35 million visitors in 2018. Competition for business and the need to stand out has never been greater.
Located on the beach just a stone’s throw from the city center, Melody Maker—named after the British music magazine of the same title—describes itself as the world’s biggest party hotel, pairing the lifestyle and excitement of a beachfront hotel with the amenities of a luxury resort.
With more than 400 rooms on 16 floors and an outdoor club that has played host to celebrity DJs and artists including Tiësto, Paris Hilton, David Guetta, and Armin Van Buuren, Melody Maker prides itself on staying ahead of the competition and delivering world-class entertainment experiences to its guests.
Spectacular and Memorable
As part of a recent upgrade to the hotel’s facilities, Melody Maker decided to raise the bar.
With the aim of creating a more immersive, more spectacular and more memorable experience for guests, Melody Maker execs made the decision to use the hotel’s exterior, transforming it into a 7,000 square meter canvas and creating one of the world’s largest permanent 3D mapping displays.
The installation—the largest of its kind for any hotel in the world, according to the property—would give Melody Maker brand differentiation by providing a nightly visual spectacle attraction for onlookers, both on- and off-shore. The projection system illuminates the hotel from 7:30 to 11 p.m. throughout the year, creating the sense of never-ending celebration.
Tasked with delivering on Melody Makers’ ambitions, New Media Creative Technology Studio (Madrid, Spain) and Front Pictures (Kiev, Ukraine) provided the projection system that illuminates the hotel. Between them, the two projection mapping specialists boast more than 30 years of combined experience.
The Front Pictures team, which has provided visual display solutions for brands including Ferrari, BMW, and Disney, was responsible for systems engineering and integration. Based on previous experience in delivering high-profile projects, the team decided to use four Datapath Fx4/H display wall controllers to distribute a 32-megapixel video signal—driven by a single, powerful Screenberry media server—to 16 Barco UDX-W32 projectors strategically positioned outside the hotel.
The components were connected by 3 kilometers of optical fiber cable, creating the first permanent 3D mapping installation for a hotel.
“Datapath Fx4 display controllers are an ideal solution to increase the number of displays that can be connected to one media server,” said Vitaliy Slyusarenko, Front Pictures CTO. “Combined with the unique features of our Screenberry media server, they allowed us to greatly reduce the overall system complexity.
“‘Keeping It Simple’ is our philosophy in systems design. It has proven to be a successful strategy that our customers appreciate,” he added. “That is what makes our solutions more affordable without compromising quality and reliability.”
