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 centerpiece 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 accommodations 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 of 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.
Under the new management of Omni Hotels & Resorts, the Mount Washington Resort underwent a $60 million expansion and renovation. Part of the renovation included replacing key locks that were originally installed in 1912, with SALTO narrow-style XS4 wire-free RFID locks retrofitted to the existing doors.
The SALTO XS4 system fits perfectly with the needs of the Omni Mount Washington Resort. The locks were installed in the guest rooms in both the Omni Mount Washington Hotel and the Omni Bretton Arms Inn. Both properties operate on the same software database which 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 authorization 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 the 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. This has addressed 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. 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 Omni Mount Washington Resort with the control they need, giving them the flexibility to easily grow the system to meet their ongoing security needs.
The Omni Mount Washington Resort chose SALTO because they wanted all of the advantages of the latest in security technology without sacrificing the historic value and décor of the property. They also liked the fact that the electronic lock solution could easily interface with their Opera and POS systems, and that SALTO was able to provide a mortise lock case that could simply and easily be retrofitted into the narrow-stile width doors that exist on site.
- Read, receive, and write information to and from RFID cards.
- Could be used as a management tool, if required, to easily check who accessed a room and when.
- Flexibility to easily grow the system.
- The electronic lock solution could easily interface with their Opera and POS 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.
