Starwood Hotels and Resorts has just rolled out a new Bluetooth-enabled room unlocking app which allows guests to access their hotel rooms through their smartphone, and avoid checking in at the front desk.
Back in the day, hotel rooms had real metal keys that unlocked room doors much in the way most of us still unlock the front doors of our homes, by inserting the key in the grooves and turning it. Over the past two decades, the hotel industry has gradually switched over to plastic programmed key cards which need to be entered into the slot on your room door to gain access, and are now an industry standard, even in budget properties.
It seemed inevitable that the next technological breakthrough in the evolution of hotel room keys would be the use of smart locks, which open the door via the hotel guest's smartphone. Earlier this year Starwood announced a pilot program to test the idea, and now the company is rolling it out in 10 of its top hotels worldwide.
To use the "keyless" option at one of the 10 hotels, the guest needs to register for the Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG) loyalty program, download the app, and have an Android or iOS device with Bluetooth Low Energy support. When the room is available, the guest receives the "key" via a push notification, and is informed of his or her room number. Then the guest just has to go to the room, hold the phone up against the smart lock, and gain entry to their room, bypassing the often time consuming check-in process completely.
Frits van Paasschen, Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide CEO, said "Not only does SPG Keyless alleviate a perennial pain point for travelers, but it also transforms the first interaction with our guests from one that is transactional to something more personal."
The company is rolling out the system in 10 hotels on Nov.5, including the Aloft Beijing, Aloft Cancun, Aloft Cupertino, Aloft Harlem, W Doha, W Hollywood, W Hong Kong, W New York-Downtown, W Singapore and Element Times Square hotels. Starwood expects to expand the program to 150 Aloft, W and Element hotels, covering more than 30,000 rooms, by early 2015.
