Definitely Doug 7/26/24: IoT is Everywhere. Does Your Hotel Need It?

Much has been written about the Internet of Things (IoT), but many hoteliers are perplexed about what it is and why it matters. The trade press has often confused rather than clarified the issue, frequently using examples that have little or nothing to do with IoT technology.

Yet IoT is here, and hotels that ignore it do so at their peril. According to Statista, there are 18 billion connected IoT devices worldwide today, and the number is growing rapidly. Many IoT applications are inexpensive, especially if you already have the IoT infrastructure in place (as many hotels do, whether they know it or not). These applications can provide a more consistent, personalized, and responsive guest experience, fewer incidents of equipment malfunction, improved security, and more efficient scheduling of hard-to-hire hotel staff.

If none of these matter to your hotel, then you can safely ignore IoT. But if any of them do, then pay attention! My blog this week will try to explain IoT, without the commercial agendas that cause many vendor-authored or advertising-funded IoT articles to obfuscate rather than educate.

Even searching for a consensus definition of IoT can be challenging, but I am quite comfortable with Wikipedia’s version, which says that IoT “describes devices with sensors, processing ability, software and other technologies that connect and exchange data with other devices and systems over the Internet or other communication networks.”  That is a good starting point.

But taking the definition one step further, IoT enables inter-device communication for the purposes of monitoring, control, and coordination. A simple example is where a motion detector monitors whether anyone is in a guest room and adjusts the temperature by controlling the thermostat or lights to save energy when the room is unoccupied.

Coordination brings in multiple devices and/or conditional logic, for example using activity from the door lock together with the occupancy sensor to improve accuracy:  if the door has not been opened since the last time motion was detected, then we know the room is still occupied even if the guest moves out of range of the motion sensor, and that we should leave the thermostat and lights as they were.

The Landscape of IoT in Hospitality

Numerous companies offer solutions for hotels that leverage IoT. But IoT covers such a broad set of devices and capabilities that no one provider covers more than a subset of the useful applications. Furthermore, many of the solutions represent closed ecosystems, where all or most of the interconnected devices are sold by a single company (or sometimes from a small ecosystem of partners). Closed IoT ecosystems can often work well enough in a brand-new building where every system can be selected for compatibility and where the needs align with their capabilities. But even then, they have important limitations for hotels.

IoT Ecosystems: Many IoT ecosystems are designed for commercial buildings. They typically connect sensors and controls in building systems common to any structure, such as heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC), power management, water management, network infrastructure, and life safety. Coordination enables significant savings in energy, water, and maintenance costs, and greater tenant comfort.

Examples of these ecosystems can be found from companies like Automated Logic, Honeywell, Johnson Controls, Schneider Electric, and Siemens, and are often referred to as Industrial Internet of Things solutions, or IIoT. They work best in buildings where all or most of the necessary building systems can be provided by one company, or by a small network of preferred partners. These companies compete to provide the entire in-building portfolio of systems for office buildings and apartment buildings. They are also used in many hotels, but because they connect building systems but not guest-room or operational systems, hotels require additional solutions to fill those needs.

For this reason, there are also several hospitality-specific IoT ecosystems. Most of them are limited to guest-room functionality and are offered by companies that provide intelligent guest-room devices. Smart thermostats are the most common, but sometimes TV set-top boxes or other devices serve this role. While these solutions occasionally connect to a few devices outside of guest rooms, they offer little or no functionality for most public, back-of-house, or conference room areas. They also typically lack any significant integration with the commercial building IoT ecosystems described above.

Examples of hospitality-specific IoT solutions can be found from companies like Cirq+, Energex, Enseo, Honeywell, Interel, VDA/Telkonet, Verdant, and WiSuite. These solutions were principally designed to help minimize energy consumption in guest rooms, but they often support other functions, such as reporting when a minibar door is opened (so that staff know it may need restocking) or when an in-room safe is still locked when the guest checks out. There are also a few more limited examples of IoT ecosystems, for example for asset tracking and security.

These providers of commercial-building and hospitality-specific IoT ecosystems are primarily in the business of selling devices, ranging from massive boilers or chillers to guest-room thermostats. Their IoT ecosystems are designed to work best with their own devices, and it is often difficult or impossible to integrate other devices. Clearly, each company wants you to buy their devices.

The reality, however, is that the needs of many hotels cannot be fully met today with any single ecosystem. A few companies have identified the need for a device-agnostic IoT ecosystem for hotels, with the goal being centralized monitoring and control of all IoT-capable devices. The only ones I have seen that have gotten much market traction in hotels to date are bodhi, a 10-year-old company that entered hospitality within the past couple of years, Neoma (founded about eight years ago), and SmartCon Solutions, an established systems integrator focused on hospitality that recently introduced an existing solution from Neuro Building Systems to the market.

IoT Devices: Almost any electronic device, sensor, or switch that can communicate with other devices can join an IoT ecosystem, often using open standards that reduce or eliminate the need for customization. In most cases, devices simply communicate their current sensor or switch status by sending a digital message to another device, or they receive control instructions by digital message from another device. This allows a single device or software program to control one or many other devices based on events, such as a temperature sensor exceeding some threshold, a door being unlocked, or a specific staff member being identified by facial recognition software and a camera.

Some of the common devices that hotels have connected to IoT ecosystems (and the use cases they support) include:

• Boilers, freezers, laundry, and other major equipment that use sensors to detect anomalies such as temperature or pressure deviations, electrical faults, standing water, or worn parts.
• Smaller machinery such as fan-coil units in guest rooms or exhaust fans in kitchens, equipped with sensors that detect air flow, pollutants, temperature, or worn parts.
• Sensors placed within distribution systems (air vents, water pipes, electricity, data networks) to detect anomalies such as dirty filters, poor air flow, water leaks, power interruptions, or Wi-Fi signal strength.
• Guest room door locks, which may be able to report the current state of the latch, deadbolt, and battery; and that can respond to “unlock” instructions from a network device, a mobile device, and/or from a traditional NFC keycard.
• Sensors and devices deployed in guest rooms, including thermostats, packaged terminal air conditioners (PTACs), lighting controls, occupancy detectors, drapery controls, televisions, set-top boxes, remote controls, telephones, minibars, safes, door and window sensors, bedside tablets or control panels, smoke and noise detectors, coffee makers, clock radios, power outlets, voice assistants such as Alexa, smart mirrors, and staff-signal buttons (e.g., do not disturb or make up room).
• Sensors and devices such as motion detectors that control lighting, security cameras, access control, and other devices in hallways, back-of-house, parking garage, and exterior areas.
• Public space lighting and drapery controls that respond to changes in ambient light based on the time of day and cloud cover.
• Security cameras, which can detect simple motion or, with artificial intelligence (AI) and facial recognition, can identify authorized or unauthorized individuals or suspicious behavior, and alert staff or other systems. These may be deployed in public spaces, back-of-house, parking areas, or even used at employee entrances to identify them, unlock the door, and clock them in and out.
• Staff alert devices that can report the identity and location of a staff member who needs immediate assistance.
• Elevators, which can continually report which floor they are on and how many people are on board, or that can be controlled remotely (for example to handle a large meeting crowd that shows up on one floor all at once).
• Fire doors that can be automatically closed in response to safety issues or opened in response to approaching delivery or cleaning robots.
• Guest and staff mobile devices such as phones or wearables, which can be used by the guest to control devices in the guest room, or by staff to monitor or control devices within the hotel.
• Transportation assets, such as shuttle buses, golf carts, and delivery vehicles, that can report their location or receive pickup requests from guests or delivery requests from staff, or that can report maintenance issues from their on-board diagnostics systems.
• Call buttons that can summon a butler, restaurant waitperson, the bell desk for car or luggage retrieval, resort transportation, or the need for a rest room to be cleaned.
• Fitness equipment that can be controlled by, or the activity of which can be reported to, a guest’s mobile device.
• Radio-equipped tags that can be attached to assets such as ladders, housekeeping carts, rollaway beds, room-service trays, and similar items to make them easier to locate.
• Inventory scanners that can use AI-enhanced cameras to monitor stock levels with a simple visual sweep of stockroom shelves.
• Delivery and cleaning robots that can receive tasks, summon the elevator, open motorized doors, ring guest-room doorbells, or call guests on the telephone to alert them of a delivery.
• Mobile devices carried by guests or staff, which can be used to initiate control actions and/or to receive device communications (such as a text alert of a maintenance requirement).

IoT can also connect to external sensors and devices and to various services they support, such as weather forecasts, traffic reports, and first responders.

Communications: IoT devices that are already connected to power often use Wi-Fi for communication, but a variety of other protocols with lower power requirements can also be used. Infrared light, along with Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), Matter, Zigbee, Z-Wave, and some proprietary solutions, have lower power requirements, and sensors and devices that use them are often battery-powered. LoRaWAN is a low-power, longer-range Wi-Fi alternative that is gaining traction, although it is not suitable for all applications. Power over Ethernet is also usable for devices that need both networking and higher power levels; it is often used for equipment that needs both power and high network reliability.

Low-power wireless alternatives can reduce deployment costs associated with wired power, but they also increase the need for periodic battery replacement. The ability of IoT devices to report battery status is becoming more common, and this is useful particularly for hotels, where servicing guest-room devices often conflicts with occupancy patterns. The ability of a device to notify the housekeeping or engineering staff (or the systems they use) that the battery is near end-of-life can greatly reduce the labor cost associated with replacement and help ensure that guests are not inconvenienced by dead devices.

Where wired and battery power are not feasible, limited IoT functionality can sometimes be supported by passive Radio Frequency Identifier (RFID) chips attached to or embedded in equipment, keycards, luggage or valet tags, or other form factors. These microchips can be powered by electromagnetic energy supplied from a (wired) external reader. When queried, they can respond with information that uniquely identifies them. Since RFID communication works only within a limited range, this enables their approximate location to be determined based solely on the location of the reader. RFID tags are often used for asset tracking, although the precision of location reports will be limited by the number of readers. Most hotel keycards use embedded RFID chips to communicate with door locks.

Most closed IoT ecosystems support only one or a few of the available communication protocols, which limits their ability to connect to IoT devices that use others. Open IoT ecosystems generally support all or most of the common protocols.

As for the content of messages sent between devices, BACnet is an open standard widely used in the building controls sector. While often deployed on ethernet or Wi-Fi network, it supports some other communication protocols as well. Many of the BACnet standards are usable in hotels, but they cover only a subset of hotel use cases.

Gateways: Because of battery limitations, most IoT devices in hotels are not connected directly to the hotel’s wired ethernet or Wi-Fi network. They use protocols that can work on battery power, but that typically operate only over shorter distances. A nearby, network-connected device serves as the communications gateway for devices using these protocols, with the gateway relaying (and sometimes translating) requests and data flowing to and from the low-power devices. Gateways are commonly incorporated into thermostats, but they can also be embedded in set-top boxes, access points, occupancy detectors, or other powered devices.  This approach reduces the cost and maintenance requirements for IoT devices, most notably for battery replacement.

Gateways enable segmented design for IoT solutions, often by providing focused solutions for a subset of the IoT ecosystem (such as guest rooms). They also frequently provide certain types of inter-device orchestration, such as coordinating door-lock activity with occupancy detectors, thermostat settings, and lighting controls. Depending on the design, gateways can also provide some resiliency when power or network outages affect central IoT communication hubs.

Dashboards: Many IoT ecosystems and some devices provide dashboards that enable the hotel to monitor and/or control devices remotely. However, given the number of different IoT-capable device types deployed in a typical hotel, this can give rise to the need to monitor and use many disparate dashboards. Several thermostat-centric gateways, as well as some third-party products like bodhi and Neuro (above) and enterprise service bus products like iReckonU, support dashboards that can report or control status from multiple types of devices. Various network monitoring services also offer dashboards that can detect and report the status of network switches, access points, and other devices.

Dashboards may be designed for a single audience or provide views for different audiences: the engineering managers will be more interested in dashboards that cover major building systems, guest room HVAC components, and other systems that may require maintenance attention. The front desk may want a dashboard indicating graphically which rooms are currently experiencing anomalies such as insufficient heating or cooling, or inoperable devices, so they can avoid assigning them. Housekeeping may need a dashboard showing rooms that need cleaning and that are currently unoccupied.

Ideally, all IoT devices would be connected to a single dashboard system, which would then support devices, views, and workflows appropriate to each department. Today, however, because none of the IoT ecosystems covers every IoT-capable device used in a hotel, multiple dashboards are required, which increases the complexity of day-to-day monitoring and use.

Orchestration: The power of IoT connectivity is the ability of devices and software to interact with each other. Some solutions and dashboards provide hotels with the ability to define specific workflows. This includes a triggering event (or set of events), which could be a device detecting an issue that requires maintenance, a guest pushing the make-up-room button, or a door that remains unlatched for longer than normal. It also includes one or more actions that are taken in response, such as opening a ticket in a maintenance or work-order management system, notifying the housekeeping system, or messaging security staff to check on the door. Actions may be conditional; for example, a non-urgent maintenance issue that requires access to a guest room may wait until the room is unoccupied to trigger dispatch of engineering staff.

Orchestration can be simple or complex. A common use case in hotels is initiated by a guest-room door being opened and closed and the door lock (or door sensor) sending a message reporting the event. This can trigger a check of the occupancy sensor to see whether it detects movement in the room within the next several minutes. If there is none, then any of several actions may be initiated: turning off the lights, adjusting the thermostat setback, closing the drapes if the sun is shining in on a hot day, or alerting housekeeping to service the room. Further orchestration may reverse or cancel these actions if the door is subsequently opened again (by the guest’s key, not the housekeeper’s!), or when the sun moves out of range of the window. All of these capabilities are in use in some hotels today.

The better solutions, which are just starting to emerge in hotels, enable the orchestration rules to be set up or modified by the hotel using an intuitive, visual drag-and-drop interface. It is likely that most hotels will need to experiment with what they want devices to react to and what actions should be taken; they will need to adjust orchestrations based on the learnings. Systems where orchestration can be easily and intuitively changed by the hotels will facilitate adoption.

Artificial Intelligence: Increasingly, machine learning, image and facial recognition, and other AI capabilities are being incorporated into IoT devices and solutions. When an IoT ecosystem has access to data from multiple devices (which may or may not communicate directly with each other), machine learning can be used to detect patterns that identify opportunities.

For example, I recently saw one solution that claimed it could analyze guest room energy usage and correlate it with exterior temperature and sunlight sensors to detect and adjust for the “greenhouse effect” of direct sunlight on specific guest-room or public-space windows. Once the correlation has been modeled, this could then be used to monitor exterior sunlight and temperature sensors and use them to adjust thermostat setpoints or to open or close drapes in unoccupied rooms to reduce heating or cooling requirements and energy use. It is worth noting that the incremental cost of this kind of intelligence is often minimal. While a fair amount of computing power and AI expertise may be needed to analyze the data and to detect and model the patterns, once that has been done once, the model can be used for years or decades at virtually no incremental cost.

Applications of IoT in Hotels

We are probably only just starting to tap the surface of potential applications of IoT in hotels today, but some of the ones I have seen (many in use, a few in prototypes) are interesting and/or compelling.

• Often the economic justification for IoT solutions relates to energy savings, although the systems that manage this apply mostly to guest room spaces and vary in complexity. Nevertheless, the potential savings are significant. One third-party study I have seen found measured energy savings in guest rooms of as much as 45%. That is probably the upper end of the range, but savings of 20% to 30% are common even with limited systems that integrate only basic occupancy sensors.

• Closely related to energy savings is the ability to comprehensively meet rapidly evolving regulatory and compliance requirements, such as the European Union’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). IoT systems that monitor energy use, water use, and even metrics like food waste and waste diversion, can make it much simpler for hotels (and particularly multi-property groups) to meet reporting requirements.

• Occupancy detection can be used with a housekeeping system that supports real-time room attendant assignments by alerting the system when guests leave a room, suggesting that it is a good time to service it. The intelligence can be improved if factors such as restaurant, spa, or golf reservations, accessing the door lock at the fitness center or pool, retrieval of the guest’s car from valet, or the guest pressing the make-up-room button are also considered. Housekeepers can then spend less time knocking on doors of occupied rooms, leaving more time for cleaning unoccupied ones.

•  Movable items that are often needed on short notice can be located through asset tracking. Many hotels use this for rollaway beds, housekeeping carts, luggage trolleys, room service trays and carts, and luggage or packages stored at the bell stand. Companies like TraknProtect, Chexology, and TrayAway support some of these capabilities.

• Machinery and devices that have batteries, filters, other service requirements, or parts that may wear out can be equipped with sensors that detect situations requiring attention; IoT allows them to send relevant alerts to maintenance or work-order management systems. Proactive servicing can mean fewer issues that inconvenience guests, and lower emergency repair and service recovery costs.

• Leaking toilets, flooded bathrooms, broken irrigation lines, and other water issues can be detected and alerts raised for routine or emergency maintenance. Some solutions can also control water shutoff valves to prevent damage. In a high-rise building, where a flooded bathroom can cause tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage very quickly, such solutions can reduce not only risk, but also insurance premiums. Where water costs are high, a single leaking grounds irrigation pipe that goes undetected for weeks or months can have a major impact on water usage and cost.

• Air quality, smoke and noise detectors in guest rooms can identify and initiate action in response to anomalies, or even automatically apply smoking fees to a guest folio (see my recent blog).

• Sensors can alert staff or other systems to imminent safety issues, such as elevated freezer temperatures, guest room doors left open, gas leaks, smoke, carbon monoxide, and fire.

• Door locks, security cameras, and motion detectors can raise security alerts in real time in response to unexpected patterns or (augmented with AI) suspicious activities such as human trafficking, or unauthorized individuals.

• Situations that may make a guest room uncomfortable or unusable (heating/cooling issues, malfunctioning devices, leaking toilets) can be detected. The room can be automatically taken out of order in the property management system (PMS) to avoid guest disservice, and a ticket opened in a work-order management or maintenance system to get the problem fixed.

• Pushbuttons that require staff action (make-up room, clean-up needed in restroom, summon waitperson in restaurant) can be connected to housekeeping, point-of-sale, or a work-order management system to instigate a quick staff response.

• Minibars can report that the door has been opened, or smart minibars can report the removal of specific items, which can then generate an action for housekeeping or minibar staff to replenish items. This reduced (often significantly) the time required to check every guest room.

• Uniforms and linens can be equipped with RFID tags, which can be tracked throughout the use and cleaning cycle: when given to or returned staff members, when sent to or returned from contract laundry services, or even potentially when deployed to or retrieved from guest rooms. This can be used to reduce uniform hoarding by staff, to ensure that contractors return as many items as they receive, or even to automatically charge guests who take bathrobes or towels from guest rooms.

• Lighting and window shades in public spaces such as lobbies and restaurants can be automatically adjusted based on the weather and location of the sun, eliminating the need for manual adjustment and minimizing discomfort to guests who might otherwise have to cope with bright sunlight in their eyes.

• Resorts and large hotels may provide RFID wristbands to guests and staff, which can function as door keys to guest rooms, meeting rooms, or hotel facilities; or can be used for payment at point-of-sale or vending devices; or can provide proof of age for alcohol purchase or casino access.

• IoT dashboards for meeting room control can enable the meeting organizer or staff to easily adjust lighting, temperature, and audiovisual devices, or to summon hotel staff.

• Delivery robots can use IoT to interact with elevators, mechanical doors, or other obstacles.

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Conclusion

There is a lot that IoT can do that is useful in hotels, so much that it can seem overwhelming. Of course, some of the use cases described above apply only to luxury hotels or special situations, but many can be used effectively in almost any hotel.

If you can deploy the right infrastructure, it should support a gradual rollout of capabilities over time, often at minimal cost as you leverage existing IoT-capable devices or replace non-capable ones at their end-of-life. The applications I have mentioned here will be more or less important to specific hotels. If you are wondering where to start, identify and prioritize the use cases that are relevant to your hotel (using the list above or your own), and test how many of them the various ecosystems will support today or can likely support based on future roadmaps.

You will likely end up with more than one ecosystem (one for building management, one for guest rooms, and maybe one or two others), but if they can connect to each other and support your own priorities, that should be a good choice. You are likely to need multiple dashboards (for the ecosystem as a whole and in many cases for individual devices as well), but if basic functionality is incorporated at the ecosystem level, the latter should be needed only for occasional activities such as device reconfiguration. Over time, the options may improve, and you may be able to consolidate multiple dashboards into fewer, or ultimately to one.

As always, feedback to my articles is welcome. Since the host site does not support discussions, I will post a link to this article on my own LinkedIn page once it has been published, and I invite you to comment, like, or share from there!