Case Study: Integrator Checks IoT Into a Brooklyn Hotel

By jeff_oheir_1

When The William Vale hotel in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn opens its doors early next year, guests not only will be staying at one of the biggest hotels in the borough’s hippest neighborhood, they’ll be staying in one of the most connected.

CytexOne Hospitality, a division of New York City-based integrator CytexOne Technology, is putting the finishing touches on the Wythe Avenue hotel’s automation, control and energy-savings platform, which features connected sensors, HVAC, lighting, thermostats, blinds, locks and room service solutions in each of the 183 guests rooms (including 25 suites) and conference/business rooms.

Guests and hotel staff will trigger a suite of automated functions—which are remotely monitored and managed through CytexOne’s proprietary cloud-based Atlas system and client portals integrated with existing property management systems—when they enter and leave the rooms.

“Guests expect and demand these types of solutions, while hotel management wants them to control costs and increase efficiencies without adding staff,” said Dan Levine, CEO of CytexOne Technology. “The automated HVAC systems can save the hotel about 40 percent in energy usage.”

CytexOne Technology began implementing IoT-based technologies in smart home, office and hospitality environments about 10 years ago. The company moved away from hospitality when the market sagged during the recession, but revisited it about a year ago at the urging of Control 4, its longtime automation and control partner. The integrator officially launched CytexOne Hospitality earlier this month to take advantage of a resurging market and apply the company’s core competencies to new IoT applications.

“Our expertise in enterprise-grade IoT and system monitoring lends itself very well to the hospitality world,” said Levine, who started the 20-employee company about 14 years ago as an MSP. “We’re taking best-of-breed solutions in automation, access control, security and management and applying it to the hospitality industry. It’s very exciting.”

As is the case with many IoT applications, sensors and data play huge roles in CytexOne’s hospitality platforms.

The system’s sensors automatically adjust climate, lighting and shades, which can be triggered by preprogrammed events. If a sliding door to an outside balcony is left open for a certain amount of time, the air conditioning will turn off. Or shades will automatically lower during the middle of a sunny day to adjust room temperature. Sensors can tell the HVAC system to adjust the room’s lighting or alert housekeeping, based on occupancy and guest preference.

Data collected by the sensors and other touch points is fed to dashboards and allows management, for example, to monitor and compare the efficiency of one block of rooms with another, whether an air conditioning filter needs replacement, or how long it took housekeeping to clean a room.

“All of this information can be used to proactively fix problems, as opposed to being reactive. Management can see and understand where there’s an issue in real time,” Levine said, adding that CytexOne uses the data to track and document the full solution’s ROI.

CytexOne’s Atlas system allows the integrator to do the same. “If there’s a problem with a processor, we can make changes to the system in seconds. We can fix 95 percent of problems without having to leave the office,” he said. “It’s our secret weapon.”

Technologies like those implemented at the William Vale prove that IoT has broken through the initial, overheated hype and will continue to pave the way for real-life, cost-effective and much-needed commercial solutions, Levine said.

“It’s the integration of these technologies that have really come around, combined with the adoption levels of users,” he added. “I really believe we were destined for IoT. The buzzword is applicable to the technology that works consistently.”