

Tell HN: UPM, my hotel front desk startup, has launched - daeken
http://www.prleap.com/pr/156843/

======
larcher
Funny story: We went on a road trip recently. Checked into a hotel, were given
a magnetic stripe key card and a room number, hauled our bags upstairs,
attempted to open the door to the room ... and discovered that it was already
occupied. Another guest was already in the room, with the inside bar lock in
place (so the door would only open two inches).

In a crazy coincidence, we spent the next night in a different hotel in a
different city and the same thing happened again.

I was surprised by this. I had assumed that the system that tracks
reservations, available rooms, etc, would somehow be connected to the system
that reprograms the magnetic stripe keys. I thought it would be harder for the
front desk to hand out a second set of keys without some kind of warning
message ("Hey, you already checked someone into that room ... are you sure you
want to give out 3 more keys to the SAME ROOM?"). Apparently I've
overestimated the room key/reservation systems in place at most hotels
(another commenter here mentioned using DOS for reservations?!).

So, does UPM solve this problem? :)

~~~
daeken
I went into this with the same assumption and was disappointed to find out how
wrong I was. There are two separate systems in play: PMS (property management
system) and lock management. A PMS may provide everything from online booking
to PBX management. In larger properties, these systems will be connected
("interfaced" in hotel lingo), but it's rare to see this in a small property;
it's insanely expensive as it stands.

So where we stand right now is that if you're already interfaced with PMS, our
system drops in and works with it no problem, but it's still expensive to get
such a setup. We're working on our own PMS API which will allow much simpler,
direct communication with our system; we hope we can drastically reduce the
cost by doing so, as the current state of affairs is poor.

------
jamesshamenski
first off, i've never seen such ridiculous stock photography as i see on your
home page. Is the shot from 1981 a joke?

Secondly, as a former hotel manager, i see this as a hack. You're selling me a
replacement to my existing system. The value is in saving a few bucks but my
security concerns go up.

The real problem is that if a master key gets lost, every hotel door needs to
be recoded manually with a new card. Fix that and i'm sold.

congrats on the launch.

~~~
noonespecial
Don't sweat the stock pictures for now. It's right at home with all of the
other ridiculous stock photography that's invaded corporate America. You're
selling to people who might still use dos for reservations.

I would have a look-see here though:

<http://www.upmsolutions.com/affiliates.html>

Not to be overly critical, but the "coming soon" just doesn't fit (literally
and figuratively).

~~~
daeken
Oh good god. Not being on that side, I hadn't looked at that page... that has
to be dealt with pronto. Good lord that's bad.

~~~
mgkimsal
Throw in the Yahoo! exclamation point and you're golden! I don't think I've
_ever_ seen that font used except at Yahoo! (at least, that's what it reminds
me of).

------
noonespecial
Anyone who wrangles hardware gets mad respect from me. Look forward to seeing
how you guys do.

It just goes to show that we're surrounded by interesting niches hiding in
plain sight in everyday life.

------
swombat
Congrats Daeken! Nice big niche, too...

Gotta love the quote: "In today’s tough economy, hotel owners are striving
just to keep their doors open" for a lock management system...

------
vorador
How did you come up with an idea like this (for instance, did you work in an
hotel before) ?

~~~
daeken
Our CEO was working in tech support in the industry and the startup we were
previously working on failed. We started talking about it and it sort of just
happened.

------
bdickason
Congrats on the launch!!! I have to agree on the feedback - the website does
not look very 2010 to me, it looks like a 'professional' web template from the
late 90's. I understand wanting stock photography to have the 'human' element
but I'd take some ACTUAL pictures yourself :)

'Unified Platform Management' is kind of a boring name :\ Very generic and
'corporate' sounding but maybe that's what hotels need to trust you.

Finally, the text on the homepage needs some spice! Some headlines, bullet
points, and bold/italics would really help to guide people's eyes to 'We have
a solution for you!'

~~~
aaronbrethorst
<http://theoatmeal.com/comics/design_hell>

------
blackswan
Well done on launching! What sort of software powers this? Could you tell us
more about the technical side of how your system works.

~~~
daeken
Thanks! I'll be writing a blog post on the tech shortly (actually moving right
now -- on the road but saw our press release pop up), but a quick rundown: at
the core is Pylons, with a bunch of custom modules for making sqlalchemy
nicer, handling forms in a sane way etc; on the frontend, it's your standard
HTML and CSS, but uses "pyvascript", a Python->JS compiler I wrote for this,
which supports real macros. I spent quite a while building up the framework to
simplify the development, and I plan on releasing all of it when I have the
time.

------
manvsmachine
In the spirit of a recently created post, how long did it take you to build
this, from conception to release?

~~~
daeken
We started talking about it in October of 08 or so, aiming to replace one
small, expensive piece of hardware (a UDP-serial bridge, in effect) with some
software; by December or so we decided to replace the whole system. I built a
very initial prototype by March 09 or so, showed it to some key people, then
trashed it and started work on what became ModuLock. We arrived at a rough
version of this around March of this year, and installed into our first (beta)
property in May. So to answer your question, something like 21 months since
conception and 15 months of development and testing for the actual product.

------
aneth
Looks like an interesting system. If I were planning a hotel I'd certainly
consider this, along with replacements for the crappy in-room entertainment
software.

Regarding the press release, in the future, I'd put the mortal readable
function of your product first. The first sentence of your press release
doesn't mean anything to most people. The second half of the third sentence
finally gets to the point.

~~~
daeken
Thanks for the input. I'm largely just on the tech side and didn't work on
writing this (didn't see it until it went out, actually), but I tend to agree.
We're totally focused on existing properties, who will obviously understand
the terms used, but the press release should be at least readable at a high
level by anyone. As we move out of the subniche we're in, I'd like to see this
improve.

~~~
aneth
I wouldn't be surprised if many hotel owners, planners, etc didn't know what
an "HT22 encoder" is, or that they were a rip-off. "Expensive proprietary key
card system" rings everyone's bell.

~~~
daeken
Yea, good point. Most of the little mom and pop hotels know, due to dealing
with them on a daily basis, but at even midsized hotels you rarely interact
with the encoder directly -- only when it breaks. The messaging needs work,
for sure.

