SALTO secures The Grand Hotel

(28/12/2006)

The 4 star Grand Hotel in Lytham St Annes, Lancashire, has chosen SALTO Systems for their electronic access control requirements.

Working in conjunction with the in-house maintenance department at the hotel, SALTO has provided 90 card reading handle sets and three online readers to date in a rolling programme that will eventually see every internal lock in the hotel replaced with modern electronic escutcheons.

Standing in its own grounds with uninterrupted views of the Ribble Estuary and the Irish Sea, The Grand Hotel is the only hotel in Lytham St Annes to hold the accredited 4 star rating and is now amongst the AA’s top ten finest hotels in Lancashire.

The hotel is carrying out a continuous renovation and upgrade programme that has so far seen major improvements to the facilities and infrastructure within the magnificent Victorian building. Over £4 million has already been invested in work consisting of a new extension comprising 15 luxury rooms, suites and a spa, while development within the ground floor front of house area includes the creation of a new foyer, new reception and concierge facility, new corridors for guest access to the accommodation areas and spa, and a new restaurant and bar - ‘café grand’.

“The security of our guests and their belongings is paramount” says Andy Barras, Maintenance Manager at The Grand Hotel. “We previously used suited mechanical locks on our internal doors and if a key was lost we had no option but to get new keys cut and replace the lock or locks in the affected part of the hotel. Not only was this inconvenient, but it could work out to be pretty expensive too!
We were keen to move with the times and as part of the renovation programme within the hotel, upgrade to something a little more state-of-the-art. While looking at ways of doing this we realised that a whole host of issues that had previously been of concern to us, such as the need for greater
guest security and the monitoring of staff movement for example, could easily be addressed with the latest in wireless access control systems. We chose SALTO because their solution offered us all this and a great deal more. They also had a very proactive attitude and whatever we wanted their answer was ‘Yes, we can do it’.”

SALTO’s UK Sales Manager, Dean Pendlebury, said: “Hotel installations are normally based on a secure locking origination that requires flexible time limited access. In practice this means that hotel guests usually stay for short periods of time after which their access authorisation is automatically withdrawn from the room lock. This is normally controlled via specialist front desk software such as our HAMS (Hotel Access Management) which is a high tech electronic lock system featuring distributed intelligence in both the lock and the key card.

The locks are networked to the hotel computer, providing the hotel with full control of the property from the front desk PC, yet they need no hard wiring or WIFI infrastructure. Both the key card (which can be contactless so you don’t need to swipe the card through a reader to unlock it) and the lock have a built-in antenna which performs simultaneous 2-way communication. This can be used to not only open the guest’s room, but can also permit access to other secured hotel facilities such as the swimming pool, health club, gym etc and thanks to the lock and on key audit trail facility, the hotel can easily check who accessed a room and when..”

Andy Barras continues: “One of our main requirements was the flexibility to control the access and movement of guests and staff within the hotel and to achieve this we needed a system that was going to be reliable.

As you can imagine hotel bedroom doors are opened many thousands of times over during the course of a year by housekeepers and guests alike, and as we’ve now installed handle sets to fifty-five bedrooms, twenty five back of house doors and three online readers to control access points in and out of the building - with more SALTO product to be added as we upgrade other areas within the hotel - reliability is of prime importance.

So far we are especially pleased with the mechanical reliability of the SALTO product and in our experience the failure of lock bodies and handle sets has been quite minimal and much less than we would have expected.
Praise must also go to the software behind the system, HAMS. This is the brain which thus far has proved to be infallible. It is an intuitive, easy program to use and the benefits it offers us here at The Grand cannot be underestimated. Whether setting up doors in zones, users in user groups or operators and permissions, the software is honest and accountable and we have total confidence in the product. We would endorse it whole-heartedly to any other hotel in need of a reliable key card access solution.”

Related topics:  Access Control   Perimeter Protection   Physical Security   Security market sectors 

Print version | Email to a friend | Related articles

Data breaches: Trends, costs and best practices gives you all the latest information on securing personal and corporate data, key recommendations for immediate action to improve data security, and how to respond to data breaches.

Other Security news and resources