Smart Hotels: Page 2 of 2

Another use case is predictive maintenance. “The HVAC and elevators in hotels lag most new office buildings,” Rook says. “The average age of a hotel AC unit is 15 years.” Elevators have a seven-year life span, he adds, “so you want sensors on everything to watch for needed maintenance,” on both those systems.

Sensors can send data through a local edge device to the hotel's IT network for aggregation, or direct to the cloud through a Wi-Fi or cellular data link. Both options are familiar to any IoT integrator, and an affordable solution for hotel operators. "Eighty percent of all sensors actually consume very little data," says Rook, which is one reason 1NCE can keep its network transmission costs low.

Looking ahead, Rook expects the range of IoT technologies used in hotels to expand. Even for hotels that have already digitized check-in/-out, further “smart” upgrades are likely, he says. "Check-in wasn't a tech problem when COVID came, but technology appeared to solve the problem. When you drive change across an industry, you change everything."

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