iLOQ Grandvalira

Grandvalira

Battery-free iLOQ operates reliably in extreme temperatures

Reference

The skiing season in the Pyrenees is short and very hectic. In just a few months, thousands of tourists intensively use all the services in the resort. The wide range of restaurants, ski lifts, ski schools, nurseries, artificial snow stations and ticket and administration offices make ski resorts some of the most complex infrastructures in terms of access management.

Located north of the Principality of Andorra, in the border area with France, Grandvalira is the largest ski resort in the Pyrenees and Southern Europe. It has 128 slopes, a total of 210 skiable kilometers, and a wide range of restaurants and leisure activities. In March 2019, Grandvalira hosted the final of the Alpine Ski World Cup, the most prestigious sporting event in the history of Andorra.

Grandvalira is no stranger to the problem of complex access management: thousands of users, temporary employees and maintenance staff have different access needs to doors distributed over an extensive mountainous environment.

The original mechanical lock systems did not fulfill their needs. It was difficult to control who had keys, and the management of the access rights was a major problem. Users had to physically search for the key to the control center to access, which could be, for example, a door on the other side of the mountain. A basic digital lock system was also not the ideal solution. Batteries can be unreliable in the extreme temperatures in a ski resort, and they are not environmentally friendly. And to wire all the doors of the station was not a cost-effective option.

Grandvalira chose to install the iLOQ S10 electronic locking system because it does not require batteries or wiring; the energy needed for unlocking is generated by inserting the key into the lock. The installation is currently operating successfully in the Grau Roig region.

A digital key is assigned to each user giving them the exact access rights according to their needs. Despite having a lot of temporary staff, unauthorized copying of keys is no longer a problem. With iLOQ’s digital keys, the access rights do not depend on the shape of the key. They are all identical and, therefore, cannot be copied.

The low temperatures in the ski resort are not a problem; iLOQ’s electronic Europrofile cylinders work reliably down to a temperature of -25˚C and Scandinavian oval cylinders down to -35˚C. Why would you expect anything less – iLOQ is a Finnish company after all!