Wearable IDs, keys and wallets: Cruise line revolutionizes hospitality

One of the world’s largest cruise lines sought to develop a revolutionary platform and unique wearable device to gather data analytics on guests’ purchasing and activity behavior. This platform allows the company to gather and analyze data to make decisions that improve the guest experience in real-time. The device serves as the guest identification card, currency and room key, enables guests to find family members and friends and allows the company to tailor personalized experiences and interactions for each guest.

The company planned to start with one pilot ship and eventually replicate the program throughout the entire fleet. During the infrastructure deployment phase, they fell several months behind schedule and struggled to find qualified resources that would commit to a multi-year project.

Kforce and the director of the PMO leading the pilot project determined that they needed 25 technical resources to accomplish three primary goals:

- Deploying the infrastructure aboard the ship necessary to operate the device.

- Planning, budgeting and creating a timeline for project delivery.

- Coordinating hundreds of third-party vendors across the globe for deployment.

We leveraged our national delivery team to recruit highly skilled program managers, security and infrastructure project managers, project coordinators, cloud, DevOps and security engineers, database administrators and deployment technicians within 72 hours. Our development team was responsible for building the architecture to construct a common model that could then be replicated for future ships along with coordinating hundreds of vendors across the globe for the deployment.

The team had to accomplish the following objectives in 10 days while the ship was in dry dock: 7,000 sensors on the ship, 75 miles of cables, 4,030+ high resolution screens and installation and testing of three virtual antennas. Otherwise, the project would fail and cost the company millions of dollars.

Our consultants met their target live date despite joining the project when the company was already several months behind schedule. Our team contributed to building a successful pilot model that could be replicated throughout the fleet. The data our team collected enabled the cruise line to revolutionize the guests’ experience by providing real-time and predictive analytics that allow them to immediately make decisions that elevate their guests’ experience and alleviating the crew of an endless amount of paperwork.

The success of our contractors has opened additional opportunities (DevOps, Network Technicians and Deployment Techs) in the operational support area for future ship deployments. Kforce retained 100% of its contractors throughout the project, which was significant given the length and complexity of the project.