Mövenpick Hotel Brussels Airport (Diegem): full ASTRID coverage with PB&A

The Mövenpick Hotel Brussels Airport in Diegem is a four-star hotel a stone's throw from the airport: 103 rooms, a wellness area, a fitness centre and the well-known rooftop restaurant Magritte. A building where people stay day and night — and precisely there, emergency service communication must never drop out. Together with partner PB&A, Mercuron provided the full ASTRID indoor coverage, from the car park basement to the top floor.

The problem: a hotel is a vertical maze for radio signal

In terms of radio coverage, a hotel is one of the most difficult building types there is. Dozens of rooms, thick partition walls, lift shafts, technical rooms, an underground car park and public halls spread across multiple floors. Every concrete wall and every fire door weakens the signal further. What is smooth ASTRID coverage in the street quickly becomes a patchwork of dead zones inside.

For guests, that is invisible. For emergency services, it is crucial. The ASTRID network is the safety radio of police, fire and ambulance services. During a fire alarm, a medical call or an evacuation, teams must be able to communicate everywhere in the building, with each other and with the outside world — on the room floors, in the basement and in the car park, where no outside signal penetrates.

In a hotel, every floor and every basement counts. Coverage that stops at the entrance hall is not coverage.

The approach: designed together, executed neatly

For this project, Mercuron worked closely with PB&A as study and installation partner. That collaboration made it possible to design the ASTRID coverage correctly from the outset and to fit it smoothly into an operational hotel:

• Measurement and analysis. We mapped where the outdoor ASTRID signal reaches the building and where it disappears completely — from the room floors to deep in the underground car park.
• Design of a distributed antenna system. Based on those measurements, we designed an indoor coverage system that captures, amplifies and evenly distributes the ASTRID signal across all levels, with particular attention to the basement and technical zones.
• Installation in an operating hotel. In coordination with PB&A and hotel management, antennas, cable routes and equipment were discreetly integrated, without disturbing guests or daily operations.
• Measurement report and handover. After installation, we demonstrated with a measurement report that coverage meets the ASTRID standards everywhere — car park and top floor included.

The result: safety that works everywhere

The Mövenpick Hotel Brussels Airport today has full, demonstrable ASTRID coverage on every level. Should an emergency service ever need to act there, communication does not drop out — not on the room floors, and not in the car park where it is hardest of all.

For the hotel, that means a building that meets expectations around safety communication, with an installation that never got in the way of the guest experience. For the collaboration with PB&A, it means a project that was sound from measurement to measurement report.

Do you manage or build a hotel, office or public building where ASTRID, GSM or DAB+ coverage plays a role? Involve us early. Coverage designed in from the start is always cheaper, cleaner and more reliable than a solution retrofitted afterwards. Get in touch for a no-obligation analysis.