While ecommerce continues to grow, many shoppers still prefer the traditional mall experience. Because safety remains a growing concern in large public places, shopping mall operators worldwide must adapt to these issues to ensure they give their customers a secure shopping experience. These facilities also rely on non-emergency paging and communication with their patrons, as well as to manage background music in common areas. Creating paging zones allows targeted messaging to designated areas or zones of the mall, or to a specific department in a large anchor store, such as footwear or home furnishings.

Regardless of their size, most shopping malls feature one or more department stores and dozens of smaller specialty shops. Larger malls often have onsite food courts, offices, lounges, and children’s play zones. With reflective surfaces, large open areas, and thousands of visitors, shopping malls can generate significant ambient noise. Because so many people pass through the mall each day, clear communication is crucial during emergency situations.

In this hospitality scenario, boutiques, large department stores, and common areas require different audio capabilities. Biamp’s Vocia platform can keep pace with a rapidly changing retail environment, allowing the mall to accommodate different levels of demand, from slow weekday mornings to major holiday shopping seasons. For emergency situations such as police activity, hazardous weather conditions, and other potentially dangerous events, Vocia supports clear, intelligible paging that will alert shoppers and workers in the affected zones or throughout the entire mall facility.

While Vocia can’t find you the perfect on-trend outfit for your summer vacation or snag the last pair of designer jeans in your size, it serves as the hub for all paging and emergency system support needs. Integrating paging with ambient noise compensation (ANC) allows the paging volume to adjust automatically to the space’s ambient volume, thus ensuring pages are audible and intelligible, which is crucial in times of emergency and during everyday mall activities. Vocia also supports pre-recorded messages for broadcasting common notifications such as mall closing times, as well as background music functions. Furthermore, Vocia integrates into the mall’s emergency and fire panel, allowing first responders to access Vocia’s paging functions as needed.

Download a copy of this hospitality design guide, and stay tuned to Component for future system design guides.