The Modern Hotelier #170: Exploring Access Control for Hotels | with Darien Long
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Steve Carran: Welcome to an episode of The Modern Hotelier. We are coming to you from the HITEC Trade Show Floor at the Dormakaba. We're joined by Darien Long, the SVP of Specialty Access Control Solutions. Thanks for sitting down with us, Darien. How are you doing today? 
Darien Long: I'm great. Thanks for having me. Welcome to Indianapolis, our hometown. 
David M.: Absolutely. So we're gonna go through a couple sections. We're gonna ask you a lightning round, some quick questions. We're gonna get to learn about who you are, what jobs you had, and then we're gonna dive into some industry topics. Sound good? 
Darien Long: Okay. I'll do my best.
David M.: Okay. First one, what's something you wish you were better at 
Darien Long: Singing In my next life, I hope to be a singer. 
David M.: What's the most used app on your phone? 
Darien Long: TikTok for sure. 
David M.: That's good. What's a luxury you can't live without? 
Darien Long: I mean, it's a luxury for me, but coffee, like, I need a coffee and a sunset every morning to just start my day.
David M.: If you could trade places with somebody for a day, who would it be? 
Darien Long: It's, ooh hmm. That's a hard one. Maybe. Oh, some. Probably my husband, to be honest. 
David M.: What's the best piece of advice you've ever received? 
Darien Long: So I think when I was starting out my, my career in my hotel days, my very first gm, shout out to Eric White if he, uh, white, if he listens to this, but he told me, look, you can make money or you can get experience, and if you make money too fast before you have experience, you won't make money for very long.
So like, you know, get some grit in there and, and, and take your time to learn the industry and then you'll be able to kind of grow your pocketbook later. That's great. 
Steve Carran: So now we're gonna move on to your Okay. Background a little bit. So you grew up in Texas, is that correct? 
Darien Long: I did. I'm a Texan. 
Steve Carran: So how did growing up in Texas shape you into who you are today?
Darien Long: Well, I think we obviously have this diehard loyalty for, uh, our state. You know, we live in Indianapolis or the Indianapolis suburb now, and I'm constantly telling my kids, you're Texans, not Hoosiers, like we love the Hoosier state, but like, you know, what a really good tortilla and Tex-Mex food tastes like, you know?
And I want them to have that same amount of pride that we have for, um. You know, Texan. But in that same spirit, like that translates into the hospitality industry where we are very hospitable in, in the south. And, uh, we, we do our best to kind of keep those Texan values. Sure. So, 
David M.: Okay. I'm gonna try to get it right again. So you went to Arlington? Tarleton State University. Charleston State University got a degree in human resources. What led you to that university? Yes. And why did you pick that field? 
Darien Long: Yeah, so human sciences actually, so Charleston State University, it's a very small state school in Texas. Um, it is known for cowboys and rodeo to be honest, I'm from a super small town outside of Austin, um, called Marble Falls, which is like a resort community. So it was a good transition away from home for me to go to that school and still have a small town feel, but get a really great education. It's part of Texas a and m. And, um, I wanted to be a teacher when, when I was younger.
I think I actually took a couple different major changes throughout, throughout, but I ended up on child development and, um, I don't really use my degree today other than, you know, I'm a, a mom and I, I get to hopefully do a decent job at parenting, but I learned very quickly that you don't make a lot of money as a teacher, right.
David M.: Yeah.
Darien Long: We should pay them more for sure, and maybe I would've stuck in that career. But I kind of found out I was pretty good at sales. Um, when I was in college, I started selling, uh, Mary Kay makeup, like good girls in the south do nice. And I did really well. I got a car and, um, yeah, I kind of found this niche and, and sell 
Steve Carran: Very cool. So you visited the Dormakaba Workforce Solutions Assembly plant in Germany? 
Darien Long: I did, yeah. 
Steve Carran: What was that experience like? And I've also heard that you want an upgrade for the PPE fashion next time you attend. Is that right? 
Darien Long: I think PPE in general, and any, any place needs a fashion upgrade. You know, like I go to Montreal a lot.
We manufacture in Montreal too, and like, you know, uh, I, I typically am in hills most days and switching to flats and having to wear these. Heavy steel toe shoe covers and, you know, smocks and all these things. It's not super fashionable. But yeah, so Germany is what, uh, one of our manufacturing sites in Europe.
It's a great, it's in this very small town, Vili and Gan and it's really great to see the community that we have there. We're one of the main employers in that area, so, yeah. It's good. 
Steve Carran: Very cool. So now we're gonna move on to your career, how you got to do Mac Kaba. So after you graduated, uh, you went to Travel Click as Director of Sales, what did those early days teach you that you still take with you today?
Darien Long: Yeah, so when I graduated, I started in hotels and I was really great at, at Agency 360 back at that day. And that took me to travel Click because I loved the tool so much and I was, you know, teaching it to all of our hotels that we had at that time. And that job was an eyeopener for me of what a real sales job was like, you know, holding a massive quota, covering many states of territory.
I actually moved from Texas at that time to um, to Phoenix area, and I covered that territory, and then they moved me to Denver, covered that territory. Then I went back to Texas. And, um, started a family then and got married and it was kind of great. I brought my husband along on all these journeys with me, you know, um, that's funny.
So,  but yeah, it's been a really great kind of experience and Sure. Learning meeting hotels across the nation as I've transitioned throughout my, my sales career. 
David M.: That's great. So you went to Alice and then the end of 2001, you moved over to dorm? I did. And so you worked your way up to SVP of Specialty Access Control Systems. What made you come to Doba? 
Darien Long: I think it was a really exciting opportunity being at Alice, being at a, a startup at that time, growing that business. It was something really, really special in my career. And that team that we had there was really amazing and, and you know, we sold that company and at that time it was just kind of a, a natural transition for me to find the next thing.
I was ready for something different and hardware. Was interesting to me that it was something I didn't know a lot about, but it's also some software components to it. And I just thought that I could bring value here. That was, I think the biggest thing is, um, I had some really great ideas of what we could be doing differently, how we could not be so hardware product focused and, and really be more solutions focused.
So it was appealing and obviously it is a massive company. We're a global company. We've got 16,000 employees. We sell all over the world. So kind of polar opposite from Alice. You know, I think I was like the 21st or 22nd employee there whenever I left. I think the peak we had 150 employees. You know, I lead a team of 250 people just on my team, uh, for North America. So kind of polar opposites. Good to have a full spectrum, I guess, in your career. 
Steve Carran: Absolutely. So as the SVP of Specialty Access Control Solutions, what's your role and what are you really focusing on? 
Darien Long: Yeah, so I lead the commercial organization for North America for three businesses. One of 'em is hospitality, which is, you know, kind of what we're talking about today.
So that is all of the access control components for hotels, um, and resorts alike. The other one is vacation rental. Um, so we position vacation rental a little bit differently. It is in the hospitality space, but typically it's a different product and solution, um, that they have. And then also I, I manage a workforce solutions, which is a, um, time recording business. So we work with all of the major ERPs like Oracle, SAP, Workday, PeopleSoft, um, to track time and attendance for your hourly, um, workforce. 
David M.: So if anyone who's listening or watching doesn't know what Doba does, can you take us through that? 
Darien Long: Yeah. So it's all things access control. Okay. So anytime you need to access or control access, right.
You know, that's what we do. And we do it in a lot of different ways. So, you know, uh, it HITEC here, we're talking a lot about electronic access and, and you know, it's all of those door locks that you see in a hotel. It's. Anytime you see hardware on a door too, all of those components on the door, we're selling in some capacity, whether it's on my team or one of our other teams at Doba.
Steve Carran: So that's great. So what is Derma Haba showcasing here at HITEC? You mentioned electronic access. Any other exciting news you all are sharing here today? 
Darien Long: Well, we've got so many great products in our booth today. Like I said, we're in our hometown, so it allowed us to kind of not have to ship everything, which allows you to, to really bring a lot more products into the booth.
So some exciting products that we have are our modern fold products. Here. So those are movable walls, very popular in hotels, convention spaces, the ability to have those air walls and break and configure space. It can also be more of a design component in some spaces. Uh, they have like 180 different finishes that you can use in divisions of space.
So really great product. I think that we typically have not brought to HITEC. Also entry works. Um, our planning tool that we use to help, uh, work with architects in specifying the products that need to go in hotels. Now oftentimes, um, we can see general contractors making a lot of the buying decisions, especially when it comes to new construction.
But electronic locks is part of the tech stack. Yeah. So it's really important to get that right at the initial phases of planning so that tool can help work with architects to ensure they're specifying the right things for the tech stack. For hotels, we have, I'm looking around the booth just to see, see what I don't miss.
But, um, ambiance Cloud, which is our, our cloud solution operating solution that operates our, our locks. Um, cloud is, uh. A big trend right now. We wanna get rid of all those onsite servers. So we we're giving demos of that and then of course all of our hardware, um, that we have to offer as well. 
Steve Carran: That's great. So how do hoteliers bridge the gap between guest expectations and legacy access security system? 
Darien Long: Hmm, that's a great question. Yeah. I think, you know, the industry access control is evolving pretty quickly. It used to be that you could buy a lock and it would sit on your door for 10, 15, even 20 years in some case.
I mean, we've seen locks go through hurricanes and still work. Wow, okay. But that's not exactly the case anymore. As we have an evolving security landscape, we have to be revisiting these access control points like more frequently. So some things that hotels should do is one, they should look at what are the friction points that they have in their hotel and their guest experience, and that can help.
Them decide where they need to make investments. And it doesn't have to be big, massive investments. It could be more modular, BA based investments that help them, you know, um, adopt over time to the, the future state that they want at a more affordable price. So, 
David M.: So tell you's balance a variety of expenditures. How should they prioritize what they do as they evolve their technology? 
Darien Long: I think one thing is really taking a proactive approach to access control and, and it doesn't have to be big major capital investments. It can be like, you know, taking preventative maintenance more seriously. You know, just like we pm our rooms.
We need to be doing the same thing with our access control. You know, we need to be making sure we're staying on the, the latest software versions, updating firmware every once in a while and just, you know, putting it into our normal rotation of checklists. That we are so used to going to, going through as hotel operators, and so frequently those things get missed because there is high turnover at hotels or we're, we're still using a, you know, a spreadsheet to do those maintenance checks.
Yeah. But like where you have digital systems in place, we can help build those preventative maintenance checklists and make sure you are, you know, staying on trend and it'll help minimize your, your capital expense and, and even really your operational expense too, right? Because you're doing more smaller updates more frequently.
Steve Carran: So how do access control systems support both the front and back of the house? 
Darien Long: Yeah, so I was on a panel yesterday with, um, some really great people from the industry and when we talked a lot about mobile key and some of the, you know, uh, room key and Apple wallet discussions that are happening right now, I think that's a really great way to help, you know, balance some of the operational needs we have in, um, the hotel because no one wants to wait in line.
And, and we can now give them a frictionless experience to avoiding the desk and really only needing to interact with your, your staff to kind of make more magical moments, memorable moments that make them want to come back. Not transactional interactions of can I get a room key? Right? So like that's one way, uh, of just trying to figure out, like I said, what are those friction experience that you, that you have in your hotel?
And then how can we better optimize them with either some. Integrations of technology, um, to, to help the, the experience flow better because that relieves your team of managing those pain points as opposed to managing the guest experience. 
David M.: Got it. And how do cloud-based security. Access systems. How do they play a role in ho hospitality?
Darien Long: I think they're playing bigger roles every single day. You know, when I started in the hotel industry, I remember where that server room was. Right. You know, and we'd need to go reset something and you'd be like, oh, it's always hot in there, you know. But, um, you know, and most hotels these days, I mean, it's the rare exception that hotels have security teams or engineering teams on site all the time to manage that type of infrastructure.
So clouds can really, cloud services can really provide some benefit to hotels when, when it's available. So when we think about access control, some things that can do is make sure you're on the, you are always gonna get the latest and greatest, right? You're not gonna have to focus several hours outta your day at all of your front desk stations to do all of these updates anymore.
It's gonna happen seamlessly, which keeps you back into controlling your operational costs too, because you're not having to pay for those updates anymore. You're not having to pay for onsite servers that you need to manage. So I think there's huge benefits there. 
Steve Carran: Absolutely. Looking ahead, what do you see for the future of not only hospitality, but also access security?
Darien Long: I think it's, it's really exciting. Um, we were talking a little bit about this yesterday and you know, I don't have a crystal ball, 
David M.: Right? 
Darien Long: I wish I did, but there's so many cool things coming with ai. I don't, I'm interested to see how that will evolve into the digital experience that we have. Um, to help service guests in a new way, in a more thoughtful, proactive way that's intuitive to who they are and what they want in ways that we just can't even begin to do as humans, you know, without indexing all of these different sources that are available.
Um, so I think that will. Naturally trickle in to access as well because we'll be able to grant and revoke access maybe based on some of these needs that we see from an AI perspective. At some point I think it, it'll be super interesting. I'm excited to, someone much smarter than me has to come up with a bill, you know?
David M.: So what advice would you give to someone who's looking to get into hospitality technology? 
Darien Long: Ooh. I think it kind of goes back to what I said before, you know, take some time to really learn the industry and learn the people. We've got such great people in this industry, and it's a very small industry. You know, like I, I've moved many places throughout my career and that's why I love HITEC so much because it's a time for me to come and see all of my friends from the industry and, and be able to spend time with them and, and learn what they're doing.
But like. Take some time. There's many great mentors that I've had in, in my career here, um, that are always willing to help and, and, you know, give on to the next generation. This, um, there's room for everyone. Uh, so take the time. 
David M.: Well, that does it for another episode of The Modern Hotelier coming to you here from HITEC. Let people know how they can get in touch with you, how they can find out more about Dorm Mac Kaba. 
Darien Long: Oh, sure. You can find me on LinkedIn, Darien Long. You can also email me if you want darien.long@dormakaba.com. Yeah, happy to talk to anyone. 
David M.: Well, that does it for another episode of The Modern Hotelier Hospitality's Most Engaged Podcast. Whether you're watching or listening, we appreciate you and hope to see you again soon. Thank you for joining us. 
Darien Long: Thanks for having me.