Vered HaGalil Guest Farm is situated on a hill overlooking the Sea of Galilee, Israel. Since the 1960s, the farm has offered guests much needed R&R in cabins, cottages, and suites built of wood and local basalt stone. Guests can enjoy horseback riding, “close-to-nature” spa treatments, and beautiful peaceful scenery.
The Challenge
With the goal of improving the efficiency, security, and customer experience, the guest farm owners decided to turn their property into a smart hotel.
The Process in Phases
PHASE I
To gain complete visibility of the room status and availability, the hotel management system and room motion detectors were connected to an IoT platform. Any motion within a room that is “checked-out” triggered an alert. In addition, a connected key card system was installed, equipping all guest room doors with key-less entry cards. Entry and exit were monitored to prevent unauthorized access and tracked to check-in and check-out hours.
PHASE II
After the success of the room status monitoring, the hotel decided to expand its usage of the IoT platform to save on energy as well. It installed sensors on the lights and A/C and integrated these into its overall dashboard. Correlating no-motion, together with the room status and door entry, enables them to automatically turn lights and A/C off when a room is not occupied. This addition resulted in a significant reduction in the hotel’s energy consumption.
PHASE III
The hotel regularly loans saddles for guests taking horse-back riding excursions on scenic trails in the area. The equipment went missing regularly, putting a financial burden on the hotel. All saddles were tagged using beacons, which were also integrated into the IoT platform, providing full visibility of equipment locations and alerting them when the equipment exited permitted areas.
PHASE IV
In the future, the hotel plans to install an array of sensors to monitor temperature and humidity in the lobby and guest recreation areas. The hotel owners are also looking into sensors that can monitor soil conditions in their garden, so they can reduce water waste and improve gardening efforts.
Takeaways from Vered Hagalil
The Axonize IoT platform empowered Vered Hagalil to carry out these processes laid out above. Here are some tips based on this use case:
- Start small: The company immediately benefited from monitoring the rooms’ status and availability. Axonize’s ability to connect to any sensor/device laid the groundwork for expansion in small stages while allowing them to start with only a small commitment.
- Gradual planning and investment: The customer added features to their IoT project at their own pace, investing in incremental improvements.
- Unified app & platform: Any IoT initiative they choose to undertake can be integrated into the same platform quickly. This can also lead to cross-application analytics and rules to enable smarter hotel management.
- Energy and cost savings: Equipment and energy savings were significant, so they quickly realized a positive ROI on the IoT investment.
- Improved guest experience: Smaller hotels shouldn’t shy away from these benefits. While a smaller hotel, Vered Hagalil was able to offer convenience and automation usually only provided by bigger hotel players.
