Hospitality AV & Automation

A hotel is a dozen different AV rooms wearing one brand, and a guest judges all of them in the first ten minutes. The in-room TV has to wake up on your logo, not a blue no-signal screen. The lobby has to feel like the property, not a lease-space with a TV bolted to the wall. The ballroom has to split into three rooms on Saturday and become one on Sunday without a technician on site. New Age Technology designs, installs, programs, and supports guest-facing AV and automation for hotels, resorts, and hospitality venues across Plymouth and the Twin Cities: branded in-room entertainment, lobby and bar video walls, divisible ballroom AV with room combining and one-touch presets, distributed audio zoned by daypart, and the back-of-house surveillance, access control, and network that hold it all up.

Owner Chad and the New Age Technology team have pulled low-voltage cable across Hennepin County for 15+ years, and a hospitality property is where that discipline either shows or costs you a callback during a sold-out weekend. We're a low-voltage integrator, not a box store, so you can see displays, distributed audio, and camera framing running live at our Plymouth showroom at 15070 23rd Ave N before you commit a dollar, and we run every install floor-by-floor or wing-by-wing so paying guests never share a hallway with a lift and a cable spool. Licensed, insured, BBB Accredited, CEDIA member, and backed by a 100% satisfaction guarantee on every install.

Guest-Facing In-Room Entertainment with Branded UI

In-room entertainment is the AV a guest actually touches, so it's the AV that has to be idiot-proof and on-brand. The room TV should turn on to the property's welcome screen, not a factory home menu, and a guest should be able to cast, watch, and control the room without a card taped to the nightstand explaining which of four remotes does what.

Here's what we build into the guest room:

The in-room TV is the single most-touched piece of AV in the building. If it wakes up confused, the guest decides the whole property is behind the times before they've unpacked.

We scope in-room entertainment against the room count and the property's brand standard, and we standardize the programming so room 214 behaves exactly like room 508. We do not claim integration with your property-management system as part of this scope. If PMS integration is a requirement, tell us up front and we'll evaluate it against your specific platform before we promise it, rather than assume it.

Lobby, Bar, and Restaurant Video Walls

The lobby is the property's first impression and the bar is where guests linger, so both earn real video, not a TV on a bracket. A direct-view LED wall in the lobby holds a seamless branded image at architectural scale with no bezel lines running through it, and a well-zoned bar keeps the game on the screens without the audio bleeding into the quiet end of the room.

What we plan for the public spaces:

A lobby LED wall reads as the property investing in itself. A row of consumer TVs with mismatched bezels reads as the opposite, and guests notice the difference before they reach the front desk.

An on-site bar or restaurant is its own AV problem inside the property, and we treat it with the same multi-screen and distributed-audio discipline we bring to standalone bar and restaurant AV: independent zones, commercial displays rated for all-day duty, and a control interface simple enough that a bartender runs the room without calling anyone. Want the lobby and the bar scoped together? Request a hospitality walkthrough or call a technician at (952) 204-7222.

Divisible Ballroom AV: Room Combining and One-Touch Presets

The event space is where a hospitality AV system earns or loses its keep, because a ballroom that splits into thirds on Saturday and combines into one room on Sunday has to reconfigure its displays, microphones, cameras, and audio without a technician standing by. We build wall-aware room combining so each configuration knows exactly which gear belongs to it, and staff switch modes from a panel instead of a phone call.

Here's how the divisible space is built:

The test of a good event space is that a banquet captain, not a technician, can walk in an hour before doors and set the room for the event in one tap. If it takes a service call to combine two rooms, the design failed.

The meeting rooms and boardrooms inside a hospitality property are conference rooms with a hotel's name on them, and we build them with the same standards, beamforming ceiling mics, tuned DSP, auto-framing cameras, and a certified backbone, that we bring to enterprise conference room and meeting-space AV. Standardize the event floor and every room of a given type behaves identically, which is what lets your team book back-to-back events without relearning the room each time.

Distributed Audio Zoned by Daypart

Background music sets the mood everywhere a guest walks, and the mistake most properties make is running the whole building off one volume knob. The lobby at 7am check-out is a different room than the lobby at 9pm, and the pool deck, the fitness room, the corridors, and the restaurant each want their own level and their own source. We map the property into independent audio zones and let each one follow the daypart.

What distributed audio looks like across a property:

Distributed audio is felt, not heard. Guests should never notice the speakers, only that the lobby feels calm at breakfast and alive at happy hour, on its own, without anyone touching a control.

We level-match and tune every zone on site once the furniture and finishes are in, because a bare room and a furnished one measure differently. A quiet corridor and a busy bar need different SPL headroom, and the point of zoning is that raising the bar for a game never turns the guest floor above it into a nightclub.

Back-of-House Surveillance and Access Control

Behind the guest experience is a security layer the property runs on, and hospitality raises the stakes because the building is open to the public around the clock. We install the camera network, the recording, and the access control as one coordinated low-voltage system tied into the front desk and back-of-house operations, not as a bag of parts from three vendors.

Here's what the security layer includes:

In a building that never closes, the security system is the one that has to work at 3am on a holiday weekend with a skeleton front desk. We build it to run unattended and be reviewable in seconds when it matters.

We do not provide guard or patrol services, and we do not staff a monitoring center. Monitoring is offered through partner monitoring centers or self-monitoring via app, and the recording and access-control platforms are yours to review. When a property's surveillance and access control go in alongside the guest-facing AV, it all folds into one coordinated plan with our commercial security install rather than a separate project with its own cabling.

### When a full hospitality AV overhaul is the wrong call

If you run a small property, your in-room TVs are recent commercial units that already wake on your brand, and your only real complaint is one dead speaker in the lobby, you don't need a property-wide overhaul, and we'll tell you that on the walk rather than sell you one. A full hospitality build earns its cost when guests are commenting on dated in-room entertainment, when the event space can't reconfigure without a service call, when audio zoning forces a bad volume compromise between the bar and the guest floors, or when you're standardizing several properties so they all behave the same way. If that's not you yet, fix the speaker and keep the budget.

The Network and After-Hours Phased Retrofit Behind It All

Every part of a hospitality AV system, the in-room displays, the video walls, the distributed audio, the cameras, the control, rides on one wired backbone, and in a hotel that backbone has to survive a full house of guests hammering the guest Wi-Fi at the same time the AV system is working. The cabling and the network are load-bearing parts of the AV design, not an afterthought, and getting into an occupied building to install them is its own discipline.

How we build and install the infrastructure without emptying the property:

We certify every run with a cable certifier before the ceiling grid and drywall close. A marginal run that passes at install and fails on a sold-out Saturday is exactly the callback a hospitality operation cannot absorb.

Installing into a live property is planned around occupancy, not against it. Most hospitality retrofits run in floor-by-floor or wing-by-wing blocks during low-occupancy windows, so a wing goes offline for guests while we work it and returns finished before the next block starts. Older Twin Cities properties are their own project: a lot of the building stock we retrofit was cabled for a single wall TV and a phone jack per room, never for a branded entertainment system, a camera network, and a certified 4K backbone, so a clean retrofit means pulling new Cat6A and fiber through an existing structure without tearing the property apart. On new construction and renovations we attend pre-construction meetings and deliver CAD wiring plans so the low-voltage rough-in is right the first time, and on Plymouth projects we pull low-voltage permits through the City of Plymouth building department.

For corporate teams running more than one property, standardization is the real deliverable. We standardize equipment, programming, and the guest-facing interface across properties so every location behaves the same way, your teams support one design instead of relearning each building, and you get one support contact instead of a different vendor per site. When you're ready to scope a property or a portfolio, request a hospitality walkthrough or call us at (952) 204-7222.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does a hospitality AV system include?

A complete property covers guest-facing in-room entertainment with a branded welcome screen, lobby and bar video walls (direct-view LED at architectural scale), divisible ballroom AV with room combining and one-touch presets, distributed audio zoned by daypart across the lobby, bar, pool, fitness, and corridors, back-of-house surveillance and access control, and the certified Cat6A and fiber backbone that carries all of it. We size every layer to the property's room count, public spaces, and event floor, then tune the audio zones on site once the finishes are in.

Can you work after-hours to avoid disrupting guests?

Yes, and it's how nearly every hospitality retrofit we do is scheduled. Most installs run in floor-by-floor or wing-by-wing blocks during low-occupancy windows, so a wing goes offline for guests while we work it and returns finished before the next block starts. We coordinate the schedule directly with hotel operations around your occupancy, so paying guests never share a hallway with a lift and a cable spool.

Do you support multi-property rollouts?

Yes. We standardize the equipment, the programming, and the guest-facing interface across properties so every location behaves the same way, corporate teams get consistent reporting, and support is one design instead of a different setup per building. You get one support contact across the portfolio rather than juggling a separate vendor at each property. We design to your existing brand AV standard, or we build one with you if you don't have one yet.

Do you integrate with our property-management system (PMS)?

We don't claim PMS integration by default, because whether it's possible depends entirely on your specific platform and what it exposes. If PMS integration is a requirement, tell us up front and we'll evaluate it against your actual system before we promise it, rather than assume it works and discover otherwise mid-project. Everything else on the page, in-room entertainment, video walls, ballroom AV, distributed audio, and surveillance, we build without any PMS dependency.

Can the ballroom split into separate rooms and combine back?

Yes, that's the core of divisible event-space AV. We build wall-aware presets so a combined ballroom and each of its sections know which displays, speakers, mics, and cameras belong to them, and room combiners with DSP merge or separate the audio zones cleanly with no bleed through the partition. Staff switch between banquet, general-session, and breakout modes in one tap from a panel, so a banquet captain can set the room without calling a technician. It's the same room-combining discipline we bring to enterprise conference and meeting-space AV.

How do you handle back-of-house security in a building that never closes?

We install PoE IP cameras at 4K with IR night vision covering entrances, lobbies, corridors, elevators, parking, and amenity areas, recording to an NVR with 30-day retention by default, plus access control on staff and secured doors with a credential audit trail. Front-desk and back-of-house dashboards put the right feeds in front of the right staff. We don't provide guard or patrol services or staff a monitoring center. Monitoring is offered through partner monitoring centers or self-monitoring via app, and the footage is yours to review.

Do you install hospitality AV in older Twin Cities properties?

Yes, and it's a common project. A lot of the building stock we retrofit was cabled for a single wall TV and a phone jack per room, never for a branded entertainment system, a camera network, and a certified 4K backbone, so a clean retrofit means pulling new Cat6A and fiber through an existing structure without tearing the property apart. We schedule it wing-by-wing around occupancy. On new construction and renovations we attend pre-construction meetings and deliver CAD wiring plans, and on Plymouth projects we pull low-voltage permits through the City of Plymouth building department.

How is the AV system kept off the guest Wi-Fi?

The property runs on one certified backbone, but the traffic is separated by design. A managed switch and network design keep guest internet traffic on its own lanes and the AV, control, and security systems on theirs, so a lobby full of guests streaming doesn't stutter the video wall, the in-room displays, or the cameras. Cat6A carries data, PoE, and control; HDBaseT over Cat6A moves 4K video to around 100 meters; and fiber takes the long runs between floors and buildings. Every run is certified before the ceiling and drywall close.

Discuss Your Hospitality Project