Details are everything. Digital technology and its progressive acceleration in all areas of our lives has created new needs and expectations for hotel guests. Upon entering a room, guests no longer want to waste their valuable time - whether it be work or holiday - in understanding and mastering the environment. The minutes spent exploring the various mechanisms to 'discover' which lights or services they activate are a thing of the past. Immediacy is an increasingly prized value when it comes to personalising a hotel room experience.
One way to minimise this time while increasing the comfort of the guest is to install advanced systems that control not only aspects of the room such as lighting and air conditioning, but also access other types of hotel services through a simple and intuitive device, which is integrated into the room design. All this is possible thanks to systems like Simon Sense, a modular and flexible touchscreen interface that can be adapted to the hotel's service offering.
The clientele of a hotel is widely varied: families with children, senior travellers and adult professionals all come from different parts of the world and have varying levels of technological skill. The hotel must have devices that explain their function at a glance, regardless of the user.
Simon Sense devices avoid any communication barriers thanks to the application of touch technology that is complemented with other technologies so that the communication between the person and device is fluid. Sense gives the user a feeling of control from the moment they come into contact with the device, thanks to the response feedback on the keypad that comes in three different languages. In addition to emitting a sound and lighting up, the device also vibrates upon activation. This feedback is configurable and serves to assure the guest that they have pressed the right button, whether or not the function they are looking for has been activated. The LED light also communicates constantly if a function is activated, since the device lights up. No more walking around the room to check what happened after pressing a switch.
All this is based on a simple universal language that everyone can understand. Sense keypads can be customised with a set of icons that communicate different assigned functions. In certain large projects, Simon can expand this set of pictograms to include new functions adapted to the specific offering of a hotel or chain.
One of the characteristic features of Simon is the ability to develop devices that harmonise with the environment by using the latest technology available, without disorienting or intimidating the user. The Simon design team has taken great care to create a modular system that can grow according to the needs of each establishment. But above all, it is integrated into the room, using the company's different collections of mechanisms such as 82 Detail or 82 Nature that have frames available in different colours, materials and finishes. This allows hotels to choose the most appropriate option so that the device blends into the furnishings and becomes another detail of the room's interior design.
The Simon Sense system is compatible with the two systems control protocols most used in hotels, LonWorks and KNX. Thus, the scope for including functions is almost unlimited - from the most basic aspects of a room, such as air conditioning, lighting and blinds, to the most sophisticated offering imagined.
