A 2015 merger between German door technology firm Dorma Holdings and Swiss access systems company Kaba Group led to the creation of a new company - dormakaba - which owns the Saflok brand. The company also makes door hardware, a variety of electronic access systems, interior glass products and moveable walls.

Hotel guest room access technology has been evolving globally from basic keys to mag-stripe key cards, and more recently to RFID, starting in the late 2000s. The 13.56 MHz passive (typically Mifare) key cards offered a benefit over traditional swipe cards, since they were low-cost and easy to use, and could not be demagnetized by devices people commonly carry, such as cell phones.

Recently, says Alastair Cush, dormakaba's global business owner of lodging systems, the company began offering its Saflok products with ZigBee capability. With the use of ZigBee, the locks themselves can interact with a central server, forwarding data — such as each door lock entry by a guest or employee — to the hotel's management system, as well as receiving updates from the hotel to change their response to specific keys. Since last year, Saflok has been providing another functionality courtesy of BLE technology that enables guests' phones to begin acting as keys.

The newest version of the Saflok system employs three unique wireless technologies: an RFID reader to interrogate an RFID tag in a key card, a transponder using the ZigBee protocol to capture and transmit data, and a BLE unit to receive mobile phone transmissions.

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