A Warm Welcome to Hospitality Options

Hotels, motels, and resorts have different needs for heating and cooling guest rooms compared to offices in commercial buildings. Occupancy in hotel rooms is much more sporadic than in traditional 8-to-5 office space. Programmed schedules that work well for office-space Building Automation Systems are useless for hotel guest rooms. Easy and intuitive user control over the HVAC system, usually a fan coil unit (FCU), is essential for guest comfort.

Is this “special need” a niche market or a significant market? According to Plunkett Research, Ltd., at the end of 2009 there were 50,800 “lodging properties” (with 15 or more rooms) in the United States with a total of 4.76 million hotel/motel rooms. That is a lot of thermostats.

To address these market needs, KMC offers two solutions.

The KMD-1162 Hospitality NetSensor has an easy to read LCD display, up and down setpoint buttons, and three-position slide switches for Heat-Off-Cool and High-Medium-Low. This NetSensor works with an external KMD-5800/7000 series or BAC-5800/7000 series controller.

The other option is the versatile all-in-one FlexStat. With the R1.3.0.11 firmware update, all FlexStat models now have multiple user interface modes. Besides the standard mode, any FlexStat can be configured for Hospitality mode. In Hospitality mode, users can change only the setpoint (with the up and down buttons), the system mode (Auto, Heat, Cool, or Off accessed with the left button), and fan speed (accessed with the right button). The FlexStat’s normal menus are not visible.

To provide even more security for the FlexStat’s setpoint and configuration, a “locked user interface” mode is also available. After being locked, pressing buttons on the FlexStat will have no effect except to turn on the backlight. This is useful for public spaces controlled by schedules and/or motion sensors.

Additional Resources

See the FlexStat Operation Guide (Rev. K or later) for more information about Hospitality mode functions and configuration. For additional information about custom programming and reverting to Standard mode, see the FlexStat Application Guide (Rev. J or later) available on the KMC Controls Partners site.

See also Small Building Automation (with the KMC Controls FlexStat).

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