Undoubtedly, the main system that a hotel ACS must be able to integrate with is the automated hotel management system. The word “integrated” has long been an almost mandatory term for most office ACS. Hotel ACS are no exception, though here too, the integration priorities are unique and specific.
PMS – Property Management Systems
Undoubtedly, the main system that a hotel ACS must be able to integrate with is the automated hotel management system (PMS – Property Management Systems). The objective is to minimize the guest’s time spent at the reception desk (this time is explicitly dictated in hotel star-rating classification requirements), for which the hotel ACS must understand requests from PMS systems and issue guest cards directly from the guest check-in window within the PMS.
Such integration also allows for stricter control over staff, as it is impossible to perform a guest check-in within PMS systems without registering a payment (the ACS, unlike the PMS, has no direct connection to the guests’ money and cannot monitor the fact of payment for the room by definition).
POS – Point of Sales Management systems
Next in line are point of sales management systems (POS – Point of Sales Management systems), i.e., cashless payments in restaurants, bars, retail outlets, and vending machines inside the hotel using the guest’s card. This category also includes equipment rental systems (relevant for ski resorts), SPA services management, etc.
The task here is purely mercantile. When transferring all (or at least most) payments in the hotel into a cashless form, opportunities for staff misconduct are sharply reduced, the number of required fiscal cash registers decreases, and furthermore, guests spend on average 15–20% more compared to paying with “crisp banknotes” — this is a well-known “purely psychological” effect.
Building Management Systems (BMS)
Next on the list of integration priorities are building management (automation) systems. However, they more frequently integrate with the ACS indirectly rather than directly, specifically via the management system (PMS). For example, when a room is booked, the building automation system will change the operating mode of the ventilation and air conditioning system so that comfortable conditions are established in the room by the time the guest arrives (the PMS system informs it of the date and time of arrival). After the guest checks in, the energy-saving and presence detection subsystem of the ACS will notify the building automation system that the guest is already inside the room; corresponding climate control algorithms will be triggered, water supply to the bathroom will be permitted along with the activation of the leak protection system, etc.
And only after dealing with the integration of the ACS with systems that directly relate to guests can we turn our attention back to the personnel, i.e., to the time & attendance tracking system, photo- and video-verification, etc. Integration with them is in most cases identical to how it is done “in an office.”
It remains to sort out the security, security-fire, and fire alarm systems, as well as the video surveillance system.
Security-Fire and Fire Alarm Systems
With the first system (“fire and security alarms”), as strange as it may sound to you, a hotel ACS integrates rarely. But for a very simple reason — all evacuation routes in a hotel (including exiting the room and onto the stairwells) must be unhindered by definition, and no integration is required to unlock them. Only in cases where a door responsible for the facility’s zoning (for example, the separation of guest and service zones) lies on an evacuation route, and furthermore, access control must be maintained in the direction of evacuation, are standard hardware methods of integration applied via emergency exit buttons, relay commands from the fire protection system, etc.
Fire inspectors do not particularly favor software integration, which is logical overall: it is quite dangerous to make the possibility of unhindered evacuation of people from a building in an emergency situation dependent on the state of computer equipment, operator readiness, or wired communication channels, etc. The shorter the signal path for unlocking and the lower the dependence on additional system components, the more reliable it is.
Security alarm systems are installed in hotels extremely rarely, and even then only in a very small number of rooms (a couple of administration rooms and life support premises, given a proper approach to this matter). After all, any hotel is an enterprise with a round-the-clock operating schedule, and the security service there most frequently works twenty-four hours a day as well. Thus, they usually get by with a completely independent security alarm system.
Video Surveillance
Video surveillance also does not rank among the systems with which an ACS must absolutely be integrated in a hotel — yet another oddity for specialists. Unlike an office, store, or bank, they try to make video surveillance in a hotel as autonomous a system as possible. Access to this system, and even more so to the video archive in a hotel, must be restricted to a very narrow circle of individuals, and the possibility of any footage or video fragments from surveillance cameras leaking outside the hotel must be strictly limited. Such rules emerged after several rather high-profile scandals, when surveillance camera recordings capturing VIP guests or celebrities during their stay at a hotel fell into the hands of journalists or onto the internet. Most severely, apart from the guest themselves, such incidents strike at the reputation of the hotel that permitted the leak, and reputation, let me remind you, is the most fragile and expensive “characteristic of a hotel.”
Of course, the rules described above cannot be called a law that must be executed in an absolute manner. Ultimately, each Customer must decide for themselves which tasks the security systems in the hotel should solve and how they should interface with one another. So do not take the above arguments as a dogma, just do not forget to remind the Customer of the meaning of the term “privacy” in a hotel and keep in mind yourself the difference in business technologies between an office center, for example, and a hotel…
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A. V. Katrenko
Commercial Director
“Smart Security” (Russia)
