STARON® Hotel Room Doors for the Smart Hotel of the Future

The technology of the future for the smart hotel is known as 'Bluetooth Low Energy' (BLE), and features new standards in the wireless transmission of data for smart ticket systems and electronic business cards. Helped by mobile keys, BLE will usher in a major transformation in check-in operations at the hotel of the future, because it will now be possible, similarly to the systems applied by modern airlines, to implement these online in advance.

When a booking is made, the hotel sends a mobile key to the guest's BLE-capable smartphone as confirmation, which then provides access both to the hotel itself and to the relevant room or office. All the guest needs to do to open the door is to place the smartphone within the sensory area of the lock system. Hotels that do without a reception and have no restrictions on opening hours offer both greater convenience for guests and cost savings for the hotelier.

In addition to the significant benefits it offers to both the hotel management and to guests, BLE also provides interior architects with a range of new options in that, thanks to the new technology, hotel room doors will no longer require handles or visible locking systems. Lotte Chemical Deutschland, manufacturers of the mineral composite STARON®, have responded to the new development and have developed, in cooperation with producer of locking systems VingCard and door manufacturers neuform-Türenwerk from Erdmannhausen, an entirely new door system featuring a design entirely without frame, handles or visible locking components on the corridor side.

‘We combine design, technology and communication for the purpose of improving the experience of staying at a hotel,’ states Jürgen Lammers, Head of Business Development at Lotte Chemical. ‘Together with our partners, we have developed a hotel room door without a frame which can be integrated seamlessly into the design of the wall. It can only be identified by the surrounding 3 mm wide join. And we use the translucence of STARON® to create lighting effects which will show guests the way to their door once they arrive at the relevant floor of the hotel,’ he adds.

Lotte Chemical has access to a network of partners throughout Europe in the development of its innovative products for the hotel sector. For architects, the high proportion of prefabricated components reduces the work involved in coordination while simplifying project implementation.

In addition, in an illuminated panel in the corridor outside, guests can display messages such as ‘Do not disturb’ or ‘Room cleaning required’, without the inconvenience of needing to hang signs outside the door. The mineral composite STARON® offers the ideal properties for manufacturing such doors and integrating locking systems into them. This thermoplastic material, which can be moulded when heated to around 180°C, consists of aluminium hydroxide with an acrylic resin as a binding matrix. It is supplied by STARON® in the form of panels that can be cut to the dimensions required by the architect and shaped to almost any required form under vacuum conditions. STARON® comes in more than 80 different colours. In addition to the pleasant feel of the material the homogeneous surface means that doors are easy to clean and look after, which of course provides highly desirable cost benefits in the hotel context.

In addition, optimised interface solutions for materials and technology provide a high level of reliability in construction planning and operations. With more than 100,000 door systems supplied for hotels and other buildings, the firm of neuform-Türenwerk has the reputation of being a top specialist for major projects, making it the ideal partner for developments in door innovation. The new system has been designed in such a way that the door is assembled with a finished inner surface and integrated locking mechanism, before the STARON® panel is applied to provide the outer surface. The BLE reader is integrated into the wall next to the door and releases the locking mechanism when it reads an authorised data code. Spring pressure is applied to the door, which opens to a predefined angle. The major advantage here is that the handle which is normally required becomes superfluous. The integrated design makes it possible to give the entire hotel facilities a homogeneous appearance.

At BAU 2015 in Munich, Lotte Chemical, joined with its partners VingCard and the Swabian door manufacturers neuform-Türenwerk in revealing the new BLE door system to the public. The developers are now looking forward to the feedback they will receive from architects and project planners so that they can take the wishes and requirements of customers into consideration at an early stage and ensure fast and uncomplicated implementation in areas such as hotel design.

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