Last November, Kelso & Co., the holding company for PSAV, which provides AV and related services to more than 800 hotels in the U.S. and elsewhere, acquired Swank Audio Visuals, which supplied similar services to another 375 hotels in the U.S. The combined new company, known as PSAV, has revenues estimated near $1 billion and contracts in place with about 1,200 hotels…I asked Steve Dumond, who was divisional sales manager at Swank AV and retains that title for new PSAV, how the company will approach this tenuously resurgent market. He says that it will be a combination of customer service and technology. New platforms will be getting additional investment, particularly video mapping, which Dumond says is going to replace the conventional pipe-and-drape stage for events and trade shows. Using software systems like Red Hen and coolux, and applying new stage technologies like Atomic Design’s modular Pillows and Wafers will achieve what he says has to be the equation for success emerging from recession. Corporate customers, he says, are asking for “something new, something cutting edge, something that they can use to differentiate themselves, but they also want cost-effectiveness. To deliver that, we need to invest in and rely on new technologies.”
—From “The Biz” by Dan Daley, PLSN, Jan. 2013
