Mövenpick Amsterdam City Centre starts every day

28 Feb 2017

The Mövenpick Amsterdam City Centre Hotel is beautifully located on the River IJ between the Central Station and the Amsterdam Passenger Terminal. The imposing building with its 408 rooms is popular among tourists as well as business people. The hotel regularly accommodates conferences for the latter group.

Even today keys play an important role in the hotel business

“A hotel of this size has a large number of keys in use every day. You need to be able to locate them, know who has or has had which key in their possession and when,” says Mr R. Vis, Regional Chief Engineer at Mövenpick Hotels & Resorts The Netherlands. Access is managed by an electronic locking system. Besides this electronic locking system, conventional keys are also issued daily.

Control of the keys is a job for the Security department. In the past, key control used to be done manually on paper, which meant that mistakes were easily made.

Every morning staff fetch their keys before starting work

Vis: “From five o’clock to around ten o’clock in the morning we have staff, suppliers and contractors collecting the key or number of keys they need. If the Security department just happens to be busy doing something else when they arrive, this leads to unnecessary holdups in the hotel’s processes. I realised that it was time to start doing this differently.”

Flexibility was the deciding factor

On Vis’ orders, possible solutions to this problem were investigated. It wasn’t long before CaptureTech’s KeyConductor solution was under consideration.

Vis: “During our talks with CaptureTech, we were struck by the flexibility of their solution.” A further plus was the fact that CaptureTech manufactures the hardware as well as the software itself.”

Clear-cut business case “Considering that every issue or return of keys takes five minutes on average, it was easy to make a convincing business case and to persuade management,” according to Vis. The installation of a KeyConductor with 96 positions followed very soon. Vis and his colleagues prepared the implementation meticulously. A KeyCop was made for each employee, supplier and contractor which contains the keys they are authorized to have, and employees also received a ‘tag’ for opening the electronic locks of automated doors as well as their time registration system data.

Flawless rollout

“Once the assessment had been done and the preparations completed, rollout could start. We asked everyone to turn in their old bunch of keys in return for a new KeyCop version. We clearly communicated the reason for the automated key system, and how it worked of course.” According to Vis, the rollout went perfectly. “Employees were critical of the switch, of course, but not for long. Everyone has got used to the system now and everyone sees the advantages.”

Greater awareness of responsibility

Besides efficiency, the staff’s awareness of their own responsibility is a major advantage. Everyone is responsible for their own key. This works for the users of keys and also for those tasked with control of the keys. Everyone knows that they are responsible for a key while it’s in their pocket. A soon as they return it to the KeyConductor their responsibility ends. So keys never leave the premises.

Increased safety through clear procedure Within the hotel there are a number of master and emergency keys too. These are for use in emergencies only and provide access to all spaces in the hotel. The key control system is even more efficient now.

“The KeyConductor has changed the mentality of all our employees. It makes matters clearer and more manageable, and saves time and money.” R. Vis Mövenpick Amsterdam City Centre

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