Soon, hotel guests may be able to bypass the whole checking in procedure and instead, use their cell phones to get their room number and open their hotel room door.
A company in Europe is working to change the way we check in to hotels and open the room doors. They are aiming to streamline the activity by having guests’ hotel room numbers sent to their cell phone and then enable that same phone to open their hotel room door. This system is being tested in select European hotels.
Apparently, when surveyed, travelers said they’d like to cut out the whole checking in procedure and just go straight to their rooms. Personally, I’ve never found the interaction to be all that unpleasant. Generally, I end up chatting a little with the hotel receptionist, maybe get a suggestion for a restaurant or pub.
Call me a skeptic, and an old-fashioned skeptic at that, but it seems that all the “advancements” in room “keys” haven’t been all that great. For example, my traveling buddy and I were staying at a hotel in Bremerhaven, Germany and we were given a card that we were supposed to just wave in front of the card reader and voila, the door would unlock. We had to go back down to the desk several times because the card never seemed to work.
I kind of like the actual key system. Of course, with some of the very old doors in Europe, the keys can be a bit tricky, too. While staying at a hostel in Florence, Italy, my friend and I had to wake the night receptionist because we couldn’t get the key to work.
Of course, because the cell phone system requires that guests actually have a cell phone that is compatible with this system, the hotels will also have to have a more traditional system as well. So, the receptionists and front desks will remain. And I’ll still be able to chat with the receptionist. Funny that a person whose life revolves around a laptop, digital camera, iPod and cell phone could be resistant to a technological change.
