Hotel InterContinental Vienna

The Hotel InterContinental Vienna is a renowned hotel in the 3rd district of Vienna. It was opened on 04 March 1964 and is part of the InterContinentals Hotels Group. The excellent location, the equipment and the traditional style render the hotel a place of excellence.

458 exclusive rooms and suites
1.200m² conference centre
comprehensive culinary offer
excellent reputation as a business hotel

safeREACH facilitates my work, saves time, and alerts exactly when it is necessary.
Damian Wohinz, Safety & Security Manager im InterContinental Wien

The problem

The InterContinental Vienna was looking for a solution for quick and easy alerting. The following criteria were important:

Replacement of a classic list of phone numbers, which tends to delay the alerting process considerably.
Easy triggering of an alarm by the reception desk and by the telephone exchange.
Integration of a fire alarm system.
Coverage of further fields of application such as evacuation, medical emergencies, and ad-hoc alarms
Automatically generated report.

The solution

safeREACH has been successfully in use at the InterContinental Vienna since 2019.

The alarm system replaces the telephone lists in the hotel. This means that the alarms are triggered without delay. In an emergency, this leads to an individual saving of at least five minutes in time and thus to a survival rate of up to 50% in the event of a respiratory-circulatory arrest. This high value would not be possible without the digital alarm.
At the reception desk and the telephone switchboard, the cockpit is in use, which allows immediate alerting.
The fire alarm system is integrated into the system. This means that an alarm is also triggered via safeREACH in the event of an incident.
Evacuations, crises, general emergencies, medical emergencies, and fire alarms are covered by scenarios. A report is available immediately after the alarm.

copyright: InterContinental Wien / photograph: der Krug

Four questions for Damian Wohinz

Damian Wohinz is Safety & Security Manager at InterContinental Vienna. In addition, he is a teaching paramedic at the Red Cross and conducts first aid training. He also uses his own emergency response trainings to check how efficiently companies react in the event of a medical emergency.

We have talked to him about safeREACH.

How is safeREACH used within your company?

We currently use safeREACH for fire alarms, evacuations and medical emergencies. We have configured a total of five scenarios.

Once a week there is a practice alarm in order to verify the correct operation of the fire alarm system. As the fire alarm system is connected to safeREACH this gives us a good opportunity to also practise the use of safeREACH. Both the reception desk and the telephone exchange utilise the safeREACH Cockpit.

How much time do you save by using safeREACH?

In the past we used to work with telephone lists. This was inefficient, because with this type of alerting it can happen that individual extensions no longer work, that people cannot be reached and overall the time required is high. With safeREACH this is no longer the case: The alarm is triggered simultaneously via app and text message, which saves a lot of time.

In an emergency, the use of safeREACH saves at least five minutes. In the case of a respiratory-circulatory arrest, this means in practice a chance of survival of up to 50%. This high value would not be possible without the digital alarm.

What are the advantages of safeREACH?

I see an advantage in the fast communication with all participants. It is often the case that several communication platforms such as Microsoft Teams or Whatsapp are used in companies. The use of different platforms prevents targeted communication. At the same time, it is a weak point with regard to information security. safeREACH bundles all these communication channels and enables uniform, secure communication.

safeREACH is also useful for getting to the right place quickly: The floor plan of our hotel is quite compilcated. The Emergency Response Team can immediately use the chat to tell me where the emergency has happened.

I especially like the overriding of phone settings by the safeREACHapp. I need to be reachable at all times and be able to receive an alarm. The possibility to be alerted despite the phone being in silent mode allows me to switch the mobile phone to silent mode with a clear conscience. If something really happens, I will still hear the alert sound.