Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company, and Favendo have partnered in Advertising, Analytics & Mobile Applications to provide a reliable on-premises solution for RTLS on cruise ships.

Thanks to Favendo’s Real Time Location Services (RTLS), guests feel at home on board from the very first moment. Easy access to the cabin, easy navigation via app to one of the numerous restaurants, pools or shops or sharing one’s own location with family members or friends – all these services contribute to an outstanding guest experience. To enable positioning, indoor navigation/wayfinding and asset tracking on board wherever passengers roam, dine and play, cruise companies use real-time positioning services.

However, the challenge with traditional RTLS solutions is that they use cloud-based software as service applications (SaaS). At sea, this approach requires costly and often slow satellite connections leading to high latency. Cruise companies therefore rely on on-premises solutions for RTLS on board.

To meet this challenge, Aruba and Favendo have aligned their hardware and software. Aruba’s WLAN infrastructure can be deployed across ships, with integrated BLE transmitters providing the perfect solution for sending location data to Favendo clients without using battery-powered beacons. Aruba 802.11ax (Wi-Fi 6) access points can also collect BLE tags and badge location data for asset tracking applications.

The use of Aruba access points makes the use of special Favendo gateways almost redundant, simplifies implementation and significantly reduces costs. The access points securely transmit BLE device and location data to Favendo’s on-premises commander platform and Favendo’s mobile application. The result is a single network infrastructure for both communications and location services. More details here.