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| Omni Mount Washington Resort has chosen to upgrade to the latest XS4 solution from SALTO Systems |
The historic Omni Mount Washington Resort, New England's premier all-season resort, has chosen to upgrade to the latest XS4 solution from SALTO Systems. Located in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, at the base of the 6,288-foot Mount Washington and surrounded by nearly 800,000 acres of White Mountain National Forest, the resort is home to the Omni Mount Washington Hotel and the Omni Bretton Arms Inn.
The centrepiece of the resort is the Mount Washington Hotel, a grand masterpiece of Spanish Renaissance architecture built in 1902. The hotel is famous for having hosted the Bretton Woods International Monetary Conference in 1944. This was a meeting of delegates from 44 different countries to agree upon a post-World War II international monetary system and it was here that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), which is currently part of the World Bank, was first established.
Outside of its luxurious accommodation and first rate dining and conference facilities, the resort, offers a vast array of seasonal activities including championship golf, tennis on red clay courts, horseback riding, hiking and fly fishing on the Ammonoosuc River during the summer months; and skiing and snowboarding, sleigh rides, dog-sledding, ice skating, snowshoeing, ice climbing and snow tubing during the winter.
"The resort wanted a tailored electronic access control solution. Working in consultation with Omni we designed a highly secure and flexible access control system to meet all their needs." |
Now under the management of Omni Hotels & Resorts, the final phase of a $60 million expansion and renovation has just been completed. Part of the renovation included replacing key locks that were originally installed in 1912, with SALTO narrow-style XS4 wire free RFID locks retro-fitted to the existing doors. Matthew Mrowczynski, VP Global Hospitality for SALTO Systems says "The resort wanted a tailored electronic access control solution. Working in consultation with Omni we designed a highly secure and flexible access control system to meet all their needs. The system they wanted had to match existing surroundings and also have practicality of use and be a proximity system to comply with ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) regulations."
The XS4 system fits perfectly with their needs. The locks were installed in the guest rooms in the Omni Mount Washington Hotel and the Omni Bretton Arms Inn. Both properties will operate on the same software database, and this identifies the user, whether it is a guest card or a staff member's key fob, interrogates their access rights and then either opens the lock or refuses entry.
Hotel installations are normally based on flexible time limited access, meaning that guests usually stay for short periods of time after which their access authorisation is automatically withdrawn from the room lock and any further changes of the system require intervention at the lock with a "management card". With SALTO and the XS4 solution however, this is controlled via our SALTO Virtual Network (SVN) software using distributed intelligence in both the lock and the key card.
SVN allows the Omni Mount Washington Resort to read, receive and write information to and from RFID cards and revolutionises the traditional problems associated with ‘key' control by eliminating the need to replace locks if security is breached due to the loss or theft of a key card. And, in addition, SVN's built-in audit trail facility can also be used as a management tool if required to easily check who accessed a room and when. This provides the resort with the control they need yet gives them the flexibility to easily grow the system to meet their ongoing security needs as required.
The resort chose SALTO because they wanted all the advantages of the latest in security technology without sacrificing the historic value and decor of the property. They also liked the fact that it could easily interface with their Opera and POS systems and that SALTO were able to provide a mortise lock case that could be simply and easily retro-fitted into the narrow-stile width doors that exist on site.