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posted by martyb on Sunday November 18 2018, @02:50AM   Printer-friendly
from the automate-the-world dept.

The rise and rise of cheap hotels has bred a new variant of smart hotel where the door and the room can be controlled by a mobile phone application. With no room service, selectable coloured interior lighting, no fridge, and no door key Mi-Pad in New Zealand may be an indication of what hotels will be like in the future. With a smartphone app to control the front door, lighting, order room service, room temperature, and message other guests the hotel truly offers self service. If this catches on, how many other hotels will switch to automated service to save money on staff wages?


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  • (Score: 2) by ledow on Sunday November 18 2018, @12:27PM (3 children)

    by ledow (5567) on Sunday November 18 2018, @12:27PM (#763454) Homepage

    Well, look. I've been saying this for years. You can't run a hotel without people. But equally there is a shed-load of things that you could do easier by utilising the whole-floor, every room Wifi / Ethernet, phones and TV.

    Nobody gives a shit about coloured lighting. Really. Nobody cares.

    But the doors should be smartcard. I can't figure out why they aren't in even the cheapest hotels. And, yes, I smart-carded my entire workplace. They should all be. It's cheaper, easier, can be revoked at any time (so no fighting to get keys back or having to post keys back from abroad because you packed them by mistake). You can then tie it into which things they have access to (the pool, the bar, the VIP lounge, etc.), use it for charging (the minibar, the bar, extras, breakfast, etc.).

    Ordering room service should be a computer interface. EVEN MCDONALD'S WORKS THAT WAY NOW. Keep the phone just in case for the old fogeys or out-of-the-ordinary situations, but why is it not an IP phone so you don't have to have special systems? Why can't I report my shower not working, etc. that way too? Even if it's a one-man operation, at least then everything can be ticketed, handled "online" and become so much easier to manage than running around every a dozen visitors to sort them all out.

    Room temperature - that can just be a thermostat, not sure why you'd want that remotely controlled at all, and when you're in the room it hardly matters what it is - but sure, still it on the "room computer" that manages everything else. Order your breakfast for the morning with a few taps. Wake-up calls. All kinds of things can be automated.

    Same for restaurants. Same for a lot of places.

    But you still need staff to deal with those queries, cook food, change sheets, clean rooms, security, etc. anyway. But all the nonsense... all that "smiley customer service" shite, that's unnecessary, expensive, prone to complications (e.g. one member of staff not telling the other, etc.), and it's actually easier to do on a system anyway.

    Then when a customer says "I complained about X, Y, Z and nothing was done", you can link on the entire stay's log... including the helpdesk-like reponses from maintenance, kitchen staff, etc. to their requests.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 18 2018, @01:39PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 18 2018, @01:39PM (#763475)

    Sounds like you are on top of your smartcard installation, but I wonder about extending this to motels where the IT support isn't on site? Are all your readers (and powered door locks, etc) on UPS power, or do you all go home (with doors locked/unlocked?) when there is a power failure? Around here I believe there is a law that locks have to fail open, at least from the inside, to meet the fire codes.

    Several times a year I work at a test lab that is in a multi-building complex with access control by smartcard (Schlage system, I believe). Most of the time it's fine, but when stuff breaks it's a royal pain. My customers are paying upwards of $1000/hour for testing time, so delays cost everyone a fair bit.

    + Sometimes the smartcard gate won't open to let me enter with my car, so I have to press the call button and hope that a guard is available to see me on a video monitor, and manually open it. This is OK during normal business hours, but the lab runs 2 shifts and often there is only one night guard for the whole complex. I've been locked out a few times.

    + Even more annoying is leaving late at night and the gate won't open. Used to be a heavy piece of wood connected to the gate-operating mechanism and I wasn't going to bust through. Recently they replaced the wood with a piece of flexy plastic pipe and I can (slowly) drive under it with my car, stopping to bend/raise the pipe over my roof antenna. Wouldn't work if I had a taller SUV--advantage to normal-height cars! If anyone audited the comings-and-goings through that gate, there would be a few copies of "me" still on-site.

    + The guards don't always give me the correct programming, I get back to the test lab with the card and it won't open that door.

    + Other parts of the facility do classified military work, I always wonder what would happen if there was a serious security audit or physical penetration test. It seems like there are so many easy ways to defeat the smartcard system (like my driving under the gate) that they could be in big trouble.

    • (Score: 2) by ledow on Monday November 19 2018, @03:15PM

      by ledow (5567) on Monday November 19 2018, @03:15PM (#763881) Homepage

      Any decent electric strike lock will fail secure or fail open as required.

      But then can always be opened from the inside by the use of... a handle - complete physical override of the selected setting to facilitate escape.

      Or break-glasses which literally cut to the power to the lock overriding any software-failure that may have caused them to lock accidentally.

      Additionally, any decent access control system is tied into the fire alarm anyway. It's one wire.

      I operate the system for schools - you think we're any less compliant with fire safety when we have regular inspections and children as young as 3 who could get trapped in a room?

      Power failure? Almost all systems have battery backup, just like a fire alarm does. In our case, every door for 8 hours+. And then on power failure the choice of "fail-secure" / "fail-open" is made on a per-door basis, but can STILL always be overrode from inside.

      1) Your guys need to check their systems better. We just don't get failures like that. We get human-error-programming failures, that's about it. Once, 450KW of power cables arced together across phases. Worst that happens was one controller went a bit screwy but still worked. We just reset it and all was well. I've been using this particular system for 10 years across three models of controllers (because of upgrades / new features / etc. that we needed, not failures).
      2) Wood/pipes - yeah, your people are bodging it, you can't do anything reliably with such people. P.S. things like anti-pass-back and audit software should be flagging your "extended stays" where you don't sign out.
      3) Human error. That happens. Nothing you can do about it.
      4) My system installer I happen to know really well (we've worked together for years across several jobs, and by chance he also worked for my new employers, etc.). I know he's not lying when he tells me the system in use is the same as the one on an RAF base just down the road. One of our upgrades was to get "lockdown" functionality, in case of an on-site shooter etc., which we had to do by upgrading to the model they use at the military base which has always used that functionality.

      Any decent access control system can do all these things, and has had all these problems worked out in advance.

      (P.S. don't buy Paxton).

  • (Score: 2) by xorsyst on Monday November 19 2018, @10:47AM

    by xorsyst (1372) on Monday November 19 2018, @10:47AM (#763842)

    Room temperature - that can just be a thermostat, not sure why you'd want that remotely controlled at all, and when you're in the room it hardly matters what it is - but sure, still it on the "room computer" that manages everything else.

    I've stayed at a number of hotels where the room was massively too warm or cold when I first went in. It's ok if I'm just dropping bags before going out for dinner or something, as I can adjust the thermostat and it will be fine when I come back to sleep. But if I'm checking in late and it's wrong, it can totally screw up my sleep.

    Why wouldn't I want a system where I can specify the room temperature I want the room to be on my arrival?