Hospitality sector gets world's first in room tech

Häfele and Interel have launched the world’s first Bluetooth-based door lock and guest room control integration for the hospitality industry – the Dialock electronic locking system.

Utilising Interel’s connectBsmart Bluetooth low energy IoT infrastructure, part of every Interel guest room and energy management offering, the Häfele Dialock door lock is able to exchange information with the Dialock server in complete end-to-end security, tunnelling data from the lock to the server.

This is enabled by Interel’s proprietary protocol, allowing the door lock to communicate into the network over Bluetooth low energy, a world’s first for the hospitality industry.

This permits hotel operators to reap all benefits of an online door lock system, such as remote battery monitoring and room change functions, while building on the lock’s built in Bluetooth capability, which is already in use for smartphone key in many properties.

This negates the need to purchase and manage a separate dedicated network and its hardware components for the lock system, resulting in significant cost savings both during installation and ongoing maintenance.

In addition, the two systems are able to exchange relevant information about the interaction on either system with each other, facilitating advanced energy savings and improved guest experience. For instance, the Häfele Dialock lock reports opening or closing events of the door to the Interel Guest Room Management solution, helping to determine if a guest is present in the room or not and accordingly engage energy saving modes, such as reducing the heating or cooling and turning off unneeded lights.

“We’re excited to welcome Häfele as a new partner to the connectBsmart ecosystem and become part of our Hotel of Things TM strategy. This integration proves how efficiently integrated hotel technologies generate savings for our customers not only in OPEX but also CAPEX,” commented Interel group CEO Florian Gallini.

“The secure connection of the Interel guestroom control system means that Häfele is once again extending not just the functional scope of its Dialock electronic access control system, but is already reliably creating interfaces that are becoming increasingly important in the digitalised hotel business,” added Sibylle Thierer, CEO of HÄFELE GmbH & Co KG.