It is difficult to imagine a modern hotel where business processes are not automated. In the practice of developed countries, this is a mandatory option. In Ukraine, the opposite is most common – there is no automated guest check-in, and in some regions, paying with a bank card is still problematic. What can we even say about security? Engineering and technical means such as video surveillance, guards, access control, and evacuation, notification, and fire suppression systems are not used; there is no security service. In Ukraine, people traditionally save money on this.
Goals
To be rightfully called secure, a hotel needs to achieve a balance in all directions that require a high level of responsibility towards the life and health of the guest.
Let’s look at what goals hotel management should set for themselves to achieve the proper level of “comfortable” security:
- Guarantee a high level of security for the property and health of the guest in the hotel, thereby increasing their loyalty. The guest should not think about access to their room; it should happen quickly and reliably, without failures and unnecessary actions.
- Use flawless, high-quality equipment that is incapable of causing negative experiences during use.
- Streamline the access system for different groups of users: guests, staff, visitors, and premises tenants.
- Increase the efficiency of hotel services – organization of “staff discipline”.
- Provide easy access to obtaining additional services and paying for them.
- All these stages can be implemented using an integrated access control and management system (ACS).
Choice
An automated access control and management system for hotels must perform a number of functions, which should be paid attention to, including when choosing a supplier of such a system. What is really important:
- Wear resistance of mechanisms.
- Compliance with fire safety and building regulations.
- Compliance with international quality standards.
- Low energy consumption of the lock.
- Software functionality and reports – it is preferable to purchase systems with the most extended functionality.
- Possibility of integration with other systems, such as POS, PMS, BMS, video surveillance, and fire and security alarms.
- Reputation of the company and the product brand – compare, check, doubt, demand trial installations of software and equipment.
This is far from a complete list, but even this can be enough to choose a reliable ACS.
Access
Let’s look at the application of ACS in a hotel using an example. Suppose there is a hotel with a SPA zone, a conference hall, a restaurant, a lobby, staff areas, emergency exits, a parking lot, and, of course, the guest rooms themselves.
The guest, first of all, goes to the reception desk and receives their room key. Suppose that different categories of rooms are located on different floors; for this purpose, floor-by-floor access control is installed in the elevator. Thus, a guest who received a key to room 401 will be able to go up exclusively to the fourth floor, and not to the sixth, where the Suite category rooms are located. Access to the lobby, restaurant, or parking floors can be free, and to the SPA floor – only in case of advance payment for visiting this zone. This is exactly how access rights to conference halls, the business zone, and other zones of additional services are separated.
Today, the “mobile key” is becoming more and more popular – using the guest’s personal smartphone to access the room (elevator, parking). In this case, the guest uses a pre-downloaded application and the Bluetooth of their smartphone, and may not visit the reception desk at all. Also, it is possible to provide access to specific lockers for storing things in the SPA zone or, for example, for storing sports equipment.
How to organize this functionality, how strict or liberal to be – is up to you to decide.
Staff
Access control in a hotel is used not only for the convenience and safety of guests; it is very important to organize staff access. Each card must be configured according to the position, duties, and responsibilities, and access rights for each employee can be different or combined into user groups with identical rights. For example, a maid may have access to every room on a specific floor and several utility rooms, only on certain days and times, according to the work schedule. An administrator, head of security, or manager may have access to any room at any time, and they are combined into a group – Administration, with identical rights. All events related to staff access must be recorded in the audit trail in your software and analyzed periodically. This element of discipline and time tracking is designed to protect the owner from collusions aimed at obtaining additional income (unaccounted check-ins, manipulations with room categories).
Evacuation
Any building must be equipped with evacuation exits. Hotels are complex buildings with many bottlenecks. Most managers consider fire escape doors to be a hole in security and ask the head of security to lock these doors with a padlock and hope for the best. Inattention to building evacuation can lead to terrible consequences. Therefore, such doors must be included in the general access control system, integrated into the fire alarm system, and open automatically when an alarm is triggered. Technically, everything needs to be organized so that entry from the street is controlled by an access card, while the exit is equipped with Panic Bar systems. In this way, the exit remains open but not uncontrolled.
No material values can compare with the price of a lost life!
Software
Modern software no longer has any special complex requirements either for hardware or for the operating system; web-based software makes it possible to manage Access Systems using a laptop, tablet, or smartphone from anywhere in the world where there is internet.
The capabilities of a combined ACS one way or another rely on the completeness of the software functionality. Ideally, these are the following functions:
- Control and management of all doors, regardless of their purpose, from a single software.
- Emergency locking and unlocking of doors.
- Instant notification of a break-in attempt.
- Notification of door status (door open/closed position, low battery).
- Management of work schedules, plans, and staff access levels.
- Virtual network – transferring all access changes and other data from wired access points to standalone electronic locks (guest rooms, staff doors) without wires.
- Integration with other security and management systems at the level of receiving reports and responding to events.
- Using a single card for access to the room, parking, SPA, and for cashless payments.
Summary
The purpose of this article was: to dispel the myth that security is an unimportant detail that can be painlessly saved on; to remove the conviction that each security function can be managed by its own local system, and there is no need to combine them into a single whole. To give clarity on what to look for when choosing an access system and what tasks should be set before an ACS. To provide an understanding that the system is designed to protect not only the guest but also the owner, preventing accidents, reputational losses, theft, and collusions.
You can never have too much security!
—
Denys Musich
CEO Smart Security
