A sharp decline in the confirmed COVID cases in 2022, the third year of the pandemic, will bring hope to the rebound of tourism worldwide.
Travel in 2022 Will Be Even Busier Than Pre-pandemic Times, According to New Report
While tourists are come back, the hotels business become better. The global hotel business has been suffering for more than two years, leading to a huge loss. Money must be well spent in the oncoming rebound in 2022. Avoiding the unwise purchase of hotel door locks is one of the most important tips.
Unlike simple articles such as beds, towels and TVs, a hotel lock consisting of software and hardware is relatively complex and offers more snares.
Moreover, once a door lock is installed, replacement and maintenance take time and energy, which consumes money and makes the room unavailable for rent. It is therefore quite necessary to realize what kind of products does not deserve buying.
The followings are stupid tax (or tax on stupidity)
1.Hotel locks made of more modern ways.
Hotel locks made of more modern ways will not bring any material improvement in the user experience.
The modern ways includes more advanced crafts, such as electroplate black, CNC cutting, more sophisticated shape with diamond embedded or raised patterns.
You will have to pay more for these ‘improved’ appearance, but the lock remains old lock features and the guest’s experience in the hotel is not improved.
These are a game widely known as-old wine in new bottles
Old wine- the old features, old working flow, old ideas.
New bottles-new look, new appearances.
Despite the new bottle, the wine remains the same flavor and is utterly the same as before.
We everyone knows the falling of nokia phones.
The truth was that nokia played the game old wine in new bottles too long.
The same thing is now happenning to hotel locks.
The new bottles hotel lock does not have better quality because when they are designed the first matter is the look only.
2.Networking locks.
Anything that connects with the networking involves two issues:Power consume and the performance.
Most networking equipment in the world are powered either by AC220V, such as computers and home networking equipment that are not often moved; or by lithium ion rechargeable battery, such as mobile phones and laptops that are frequently moved and rely on frequent charging.
As a necessity for daily operation, hotel locks could not use rechargeable batteries, whose slow replacement and long precharging time make hotel locks complex to manage and costly.
So currently, most hotels still use ordinary AA alkaline batteries for their fast replacement and convenience.
With AA batteries in use, a hotel lock is impossible to be charged daily like a mobile to remain online.Because AA batteries can’t support high power consumption, the proposals available now mostly feature low power consumption; take ZIGBEE as an example, its low power consumption is realized often by sacrificing functions.
That’s why some functions of networking locks are puny.
Some promotional gimmicks, such as remote door opening and card deletion, based on my 16 years’ experience, are not needed by small hotels and are not good enough in big hotels.
The essential use of networking is to transmit data lively, which small hotels, with fewer rooms and guests, do not need, as their management is not complex.
Whereas big scale hotels, with many rooms and guests, will require fast response and low latency in case of data transmission.
Yet a lot of networking locks available online lack large-scale application cases and continuous iteration and upgrade.
Their design defects and puny networking functions from low power consumption lead to serious signal blocking and delayed online feedback.
They consume electricity so fast that hotels using such locks have to change batteries every few months.
Only the neat networking diagram deserves admiration. Like a child’s toy, such a product lacking practical value will soon be abandoned once the owner gets tired of it.
3.Mobile phone door opening
Door opening using a mobile phone is nothing new, but has come into being for over a decade. The earliest product is the VINGCARD, which supports NFC door opening.
But its use rate remains below 20% until today.
In Asia and Europe, hoteliers even won’t consider the mobilephone opening door locks because it could not work together with the energy saving switch.
It is another standard necessity in a hotel. The roaring energy consumption today makes electric energy conservation an increasingly valued cause.
In my view, the mobilephone opening solution in North American hotels owns to the absence of energy saving switches in most hotels there.
Besides, electricity in North America is cheap and some hotels are time-honored (outdated).Hotel equipment in north america mostly finished in the 1990s when energy saving switches were not invented yet, and overhauling wires is strenuous, electricity switches fail to get a widespread application in North America.
Most of the hotels in North America use a master switch instead.
Interesting topic – is mobile phone door opening really necessary?
I believe that the heart of this issue is not whether to take a phisical card key or not (to put a virtual card in the smart phone), but how to make the guests get the room key card speedily.
Mobile phone door opening is born with a bunch of problems itself, for example:
1.Downloading of the app: a lot of people are unwilling to put another app in their strained phone memory space, to just open a door.
2.It is not a room key card that the tourists hate, it is the lengthy check-in procedures and long waiting time.
3.A card itself will not bring an extra burden, because firstly it is carried shortly only during the hotel stay, and secondly, a thin card can be put behind the phone case if all other ways are not available.
4.Hotel locks supporting mobile phone opening often feature high energy consumption and unstable battery with a short life.
Another essential issue is, with the room card capable of opening the door. So door opening by a mobile phone is just an alternative.
Unlike the room card that is as indispensable as the four wheels of a car, the mobile phone door opening is just a spare tire in the trunk.
A door lock remains sound regardless if a mobile phone can unlock it or not. Mobile phone door opening is rather an innovation sheerly for making innovation than a practical innovation. The door lock manufacturers, unable to figure out how to make innovation, have brought smart phones into the field and care little if the new way doesn’t work well.
The mobile phone door opening is, after all, a repeat thing of room key card.but is it the only way to improve the hotel lock system?
To sum up, there are many hotel lock products that do not deserve your money. Hotel bosses, on alert for your un-infinite cash and spend it on the most needed place, and welcome the return of tourists from all over the world!
