Capable of seating 1,770 people, it is a popular venue for conventions, grand social occasions and televised award ceremonies. Until the summer of 2005, all table lighting was achieved with banks of manually-adjusted pinspots using the venerable 30W 6V 4515 lamp. This arrangement had two drawbacks; the technical staff needed three hours to aim the spots using a vertical ladder for access, and secondly, the lamp life was only 150 hours so lamp change was a significant and regular cost. An additional problem was that the ladder couldn’t be maneuvered around the room when the tables were in position, therefore spots could not be adjusted, if there were any last-minute changes.

When an accident with the vertical ladder resulted in the hospitalization of a contractor, the hotel decided to adopt RCL technology and purchased 250 DR2 lights for the Great Room and 60 for the Ballroom.

What used to take three hours now takes 30 minutes. There are no safety issues when the lights are being aimed and the DR2 can be refocused at speed from ground level.