Locks: guardians of your dream

By: Duván Chaverra A.

The Ecuadorian company Siaproci recently invited us to Ecuador so that HOTEL & RESTAURANT MANAGEMENT could learn more about some of the integrations that the company has made in several of the most outstanding hotels in the country, where the sector continues to demonstrate significant growth in renovation and new projects.

The South American country, located in the middle of the world, famous for its rich marine cuisine and for being the largest exporter of bananas on the planet, is also home to important hotels of international chains, as well as some places of local administration, which also offer the guest their best face.

In this Success Story we will talk about the Adel locks for the rooms that were installed in three renowned hotels in the country: the Hotel El Marqués in the city of Esmeraldas, the Holiday Inn Express Hotel in Quito, and the Hotel Cumbayá, near Quito.

Patricio Fustillos, commercial manager, and Gabriela Niama, who also works in the same department at Siaproci, will delve a little deeper into the Mifer wireless transmission technology, with which the locks that we will analyze in this article have.

"In each of the hotels mentioned, a room management system consisting of locks on each room and energy savers was installed; and an elevator controller was also placed at the Holiday Inn Hotel. The difference with traditional facilities is that in these hotels they put locks with Mifer reading technology," explained Fustillos, who also listed some of the advantages of this system:

1. The management of rooms in terms of check in, check out and reservation hours is done in an agile way to quickly serve customers.

2. High security locks, its construction has a pistillo to avoid opening with the entry of cards or similar cards. This increases security in the guest's room.

3. The lock has an alarm that indicates when the door is poorly closed.

4. The non-contact between the card and the lock increases the useful life of the same, so the hotel makes investments for a longer time.

5. Operationally for the user it is easier to approach the card than to insert one into the lock, since many times the client is wrong on the side, having to insist several times. In the Mifer this will not happen.

6. The Mifer card is a card with additional memory, which can be used in extra hotel applications such as consumption, money charge, etc. The advantage of the hotel that has this technology is that it can develop additional customer service or hotel service applications based on this structure.

For her part, Gabriela spoke about the number of locks that were installed in each of the hotels in question. "In the Hotel Cumbayá 20 locks were placed, in the Holiday Inn 140 locks in the rooms and 5 convention rooms and in the Hotel El Marqués 180 locks were installed."

1. Give greater ease to the client for his entry and exit from the room.

2.It offers this option to the client but increases the security of the hotel because it controls the period of stay in the room, if the client leaves this space he must necessarily attend reception to be changed, this implies that the hotel finds out and updates his stay again.

3. Greater security of the guest in the room by forcing the door in the event that the user leaves the room poorly closed.

4. Control of opening of room for cleaning, the system is able to generate card for the people in charge of the toilet, giving a certain period of time for their entry. You can still generate cards for a security person who opens any room or for the manager. In conclusion, a complete administration on the operation.

5. Record which card and when a room is opened.

6. Provides certain management reporting information that allows to handle important information in decision making such as: level of occupancy at the moment, most used rooms, floors, etc.

Technical description
During our trip we were able to realize the practicality that the system offers. Just by putting the card, regardless of the side, about 3 cms from the lock it immediately goes to the opening state, indicated by a green LED on it, in the event that the card does not respond a red LED warns that there is an error and the door can not be opened. Once it is in the opening state, the lock remains so for about 50 seconds, then it is placed back in a secure state.

"The lock in all cases is high security, has five internal cylinders, one of them is to prevent its forced opening with cards or similar cards, another performs the functions of an inserted magnetic contact, so that if the door is not completely closed an audible alarm is activated. Another pistillo is activated internally by the guest to increase their safety inside the room. The two additional ones are the traditional insurance pistillos, which are automatically placed after an opening time has passed," explained Patricio Fustillos.

Regarding the monitoring process that is carried out with this equipment, Fustillos explained that this is done offline, thanks to the storage capacity that the lock has.

"Monitoring is not online, this technology does offline monitoring. That is, all opening and closing events are stored on the lock. When it is required to retrieve the information, there is a card generated by the system for this purpose called Query Card. When it passes through the lock, it collects all the information of openings and closings, including hours. This card is taken to the central system in which it collects and displays the information in the management software," said Fustillos.

Finally, Fustillos spoke about user satisfaction: "In all three cases we can mention express customer satisfaction for their decision to use this technology. We have reviewed with them the results and they fit into what is expected according to what is offered at the time of sale."

"We are dedicated to the part of electrical installations and electronic security. We have good alliances with companies such as Lenel and Bosch, and in the hotel sector with Adel locks, which has allowed us to enter strongly into the Ecuadorian security sector, where we are specializing, and we have state-of-the-art technology, which is what distinguishes us from the competition. We are always trying to have new products and offer the customer new technologies," explained Santiago León.

For the next five years, Siaproci aims to enter other international markets, especially in neighboring countries such as Colombia and Peru, where it expects to make a presence and take advantage of the good performance that both nations are registering in the industry.

"Our vision is to reach international markets such as Colombia and Peru and we are preparing to reach those countries, and for now we are working to achieve ISO standards and thus achieve it. This year we have had a profound change and we are implementing many processes in each department to improve in order to project ourselves in the next five years and enter the market, especially in Peru, where we have many possibilities, due to the great demand that these products have there, "said the financial manager of the Ecuadorian company.

The company, which has a tendency to offer IP technology, said that its added value is based on the quality of the human team and the permanent accompaniment to the client: "The added value is the people we have in our team, who are professional, qualified and with whom we try to have a very friendly treatment with the client. Not only do we seek to be a company that will install, do its job and ready, we try to provide technical advice, after-sales services and a complete maintenance service, "concluded Santiago León.