Hotel rooms are getting smarter. Imagine nevery worrying about losing a key or keycard again. By the end of March, preferred guests at select Starwood Hotels & Resorts will receive a virtual hotel room key on their smartphone when they check in.
Preferred guests at Starwood's Aloft Hotel in Silicon Valley or Manhattan will be the first to try the new keyless entry technology. Guests with an iPhone 4s, Android 4.3 handsets, or newer can tap and twist their smartphones to unlock their rooms via Bluetooth.
The company hopes to introduce virtual key technology for guests at all Aloft and W Hotels, which attract younger and more tech-savvy customers, before the end of 2015. In total, the two brands represent 123 Starwood properties.
"Coming soon: SPG® will roll out a revolutionary new program that puts the power of your room key on your mobile device. Soon Starwood Preferred Guest® members can open their hotel room from their SPG App - no extra baggage. Consider this one more key to a better stay," says the sign-up page for the Starwood Preferred Guest app.
The new virtual key is an improvement from the innovative keycard the hotel group introduced in 2010 at Aloft Hotels in the U.S. Members of its loyalty club were able to make use of the keycards as their personal information and credit card details were already in file. The keycard was mailed to a customer and can be reactivated so it can be used at any Aloft hotel.
With the positive response to the keycard technology, Starwood Hotels initiated "Project Sesame" to work on the virtual key in collaboration with Swedish lock manufacturer Assa Abloy.
"We believe this will become the new standard for how people will want to enter a hotel. It may be a novelty at first, but we think it will become table stakes for managing a hotel," said Starwood Hotels' chief executive Frits van Paasschen.
While the cost of upgrading the locks will be significant, van Passchen promised that Starwood will provide a "significant contribution" to help cover the expenses.
Worries about power failures have been addressed with locks designed to operate using batteries. Hotel staff will also be alerted before batteries die.
The virtual key comes with its own risks at a time when bugs and hacking can easily compromise the safety of hotel guests.
"There are ways to make its security more foolproof by having the guests download the key into the app only when they are on premise to ensure that the computing system at the hotel doesn't get overwhelmed by attacks or spam from outside," Chetan Sharma, a mobile security expert, wrote in an email to NBC News.
Now, all hotel guests will have to worry about is losing their smartphones.
