30–45%
HVAC & lighting wasted in vacant rooms
Industry estimates put energy waste in unoccupied rooms — running at full capacity with nobody home — at roughly a third to nearly half of total room consumption.
For independent hotels, motels & caravan parks
Smart room automation that just works. Wired into the PMS you already use.
4Control is a managed automation layer for hospitality operators. We connect air-conditioning, locks, lighting and energy monitoring directly to your property management system — so every room runs itself, costs drop, and your guests barely notice the technology working.
30–50%
HVAC energy reduction — transparently, without changing what guests do
$8–$14
Daily energy wasted per unoccupied room running HVAC & lighting at full tilt
2nd
Utilities are a hotel's second-highest operating cost after labour
ecoAir Cloud
TTLock smart locks
Shelly energy monitoring
Reed door & window sensors
Presence detection
Direct PMS integration
ecoAir Cloud
TTLock smart locks
Shelly energy monitoring
Reed door & window sensors
Presence detection
Direct PMS integration
The guest moment
The room is ready before they are.
A guest pulls up to your property. The path light outside their cabin is already on. They tap the lock — the entry light comes up to a warm welcome level. The air-con, which has been quietly idling all afternoon to save energy, has stepped into comfort mode in the last fifteen minutes. The room feels expected. That's the difference between a property guests remember fondly and one they merely tolerated.
Behind the scenes, the same intelligence is trimming HVAC runtime, watching for abnormal loads, and ensuring nothing is being wasted while no-one is in the room. Guests never see the savings happening. They just feel the comfort.
01 — The problem
Every empty room is quietly burning money.
Hospitality operates 24/7 — but most properties have no real-time picture of what's running, where, and for whom. Air-con cools rooms with the balcony door open. Lights stay on between guests. HVAC failures are discovered only after a complaint. For independent operators, the cost of all that quiet waste is enormous.
68%
HVAC failures found after guests complain
Without sensors, compressor strain, refrigerant loss and airflow drops only surface once a guest is uncomfortable. Reactive maintenance costs more — and damages reviews.
24/7
Air-con fighting an open balcony door
Without door and window sensing, compressors quietly run flat out trying to cool the outdoors. Nobody knows until the bill arrives — and by then the damage is months deep.
∞
The hidden cost: guest EV charging
Guests plugging electric vehicles into a standard guest-room outlet can quietly draw thousands of dollars of power per stay. Without circuit-level monitoring, nobody sees it.
02 — Our approach
Tactile controls. Invisible automation.
We don't believe guests should download an app to turn on a light. The familiar wall switch is still the best interface ever designed for a hotel room. We keep what guests already know — and put the intelligence behind the wall, where it belongs.
Physical, not pixel
Wall switches and panels — not phone apps — keep guest interactions exactly where expectations already are. Real tactile feedback. Zero training required.
PMS-driven, not staff-driven
Check-in, check-out, do-not-disturb, no-show — every event in your property management system fires a predefined scenario. Nobody has to remember to do anything.
Cloud, not server cupboards
No bespoke on-site software. No locked-in hardware controller. We deploy off-the-shelf, electrically certified devices — and manage the brains in the cloud.
Independent-first pricing
The big chains have had this technology for years. We exist to bring the cost of implementation — and ongoing management — down to where small and mid-size operators can actually justify it.
Guests want a room that feels right the moment they walk in. Operators want a property that costs less to run while the lights are off. There's no reason those two things should be in tension — and with the right wiring, they aren't.
03 — How it works
One arrival, orchestrated.
A guest's check-in is the trigger. From the moment your PMS confirms the booking, 4Control composes the room around them — and reverses everything the moment they leave.
-
Booking confirmed in your PMS
Your existing property management system stays the source of truth. We listen — we don't replace.
PMS event -
Smart lock issues a guest credential
A time-bound code is generated through TTLock and delivered however you already handle guest comms — SMS, email, kiosk.
TTLock -
Room pre-conditions just before arrival
15 minutes before check-in time, the air-con shifts from setback to comfort. No energy wasted overnight; no cold room on arrival.
ecoAir Cloud -
Door opens — the welcoming touch
The smart lock event fires the entry scene: entry light on, climate confirmed, an unmistakeable sense the room was expecting them.
Door → Scene -
Energy is watched in the background
Shelly EM modules track real-time draw at the circuit level. Abnormal loads — including EVs being charged from a standard outlet — alert your team within minutes, not at the next bill cycle.
Shelly EM -
Window opens? Air-con pauses.
Reed switches on doors and windows talk directly to the air-con. The moment a balcony slider goes open, the compressor stops working against the outdoors.
Reed sensor -
Check-out: room returns to standby
Lights off. Climate to setback. Lock credential revoked. The next preparation cycle is already queued. The cleaner walks into a room that has been waiting for them, not running unsupervised for six hours.
PMS event
04 — Integrations
Best-of-breed devices, one operating layer.
We don't make you choose a single vendor's locked ecosystem. Each integration is a proven, electrically certified product chosen for reliability, price and openness.
Climate
ecoAir Cloud
PMS-integrated, battery-free smart remote replacing existing AC remotes. RCM certified, 240V wall-mounted, 65 mA standby. Works with any make of split-system air-con.
- 2-way visibility — see every room's climate at a glance
- Reed switches for door & window open-state detection
- Australian owned, hospitality-built from day one
Access
TTLock smart locks
Time-bound digital credentials issued from your PMS workflow. No keys to cut, no cards to magnetise, no late-night front-desk lockouts.
- Codes valid only for the booking window
- Open events trigger entry scenes & HVAC wake-up
- Full audit log of every entry, every door
Energy
Shelly EM monitoring
Circuit-level power monitoring that watches what's actually being drawn — not just what was billed at the end of the month.
- Per-room or per-zone real-time consumption
- Abnormal load detection — including guest EV charging
- Baseline drift alerts catch failing equipment early
Sensing & control
Presence sensors & switches
Coming soonOur own range of presence detectors and light switches — lower cost than incumbent options, every bit as well-built and properly certified for Australian wiring.
- Mains-powered, no battery surprise replacements
- Drop-in compatible with existing wall plates
- Trigger lighting scenes on entry, not on app-tap
The glue
Direct PMS integration
The whole system listens to events you already generate: bookings, check-ins, check-outs, do-not-disturb, no-shows. Predefined scenarios trigger automatically — exactly when they're expected, without staff intervention. No bespoke middleware. No on-site PC quietly aging in a back-office cupboard.
05 — Outcomes
What changes once it's actually running.
These are the kinds of numbers operators see once a managed automation layer is doing its job — quietly, in the background, while guests are simply enjoying their stay. Your specifics will depend on your property, your climate and your starting point.
30–50%
heating & cooling energy reduced
By trimming runtime in vacant rooms and stopping HVAC fighting open doors
~30%
total per-room energy reduction
When occupancy-aware HVAC, lighting and standby control work together
Higher
guest comfort scores
Climate & lighting respond to actual presence — never a cold or dark welcome
65%
fewer equipment-related complaints
Anomaly alerts catch HVAC drift and abnormal loads before guests notice
Visible
guest EV charging caught early
Circuit-level monitoring surfaces unexpected loads within minutes, not billing cycles
Rapid
deployment, no construction
Wall panels replace existing AC remotes; phased rollout starts with a single wing
Industry-accepted ranges for hospitality smart-room deployments. Your numbers will depend on tariff, climate, baseline behaviour and which integrations you choose — these are figures that make the conversation worth starting.
06 — Built for the operators we like
Independent. Family-run. Under 200 rooms. This is for you.
The hotel chains have had room automation for the better part of a decade. They could afford the integrators, the bespoke software, the seven-figure rollouts. Independent hotels, motels, and caravan parks with cabins have been priced out — until the underlying hardware got cheap, the protocols got open, and the cloud got reliable.
4Control exists in that gap. We've taken the same architectural ideas the chains use and rebuilt them on commodity, certified hardware managed centrally. The result is a system you can justify on a 30-room property, that pays for itself in energy savings, and that you don't need an IT department to keep running.
Get a property assessment
07 — Contact us
Let's look at your property specifically.
Tell us a little about your site and we'll come back within one business day with a tailored estimate — including projected energy savings based on your current usage and a sensible deployment plan.
- No-obligation walkthrough
- Demo & trial units available
- Self-installable by a licensed electrician
- Phased rollout — start with one wing