Holiday Inn to test smartphone as hotel-room key; some guests prefer to skip front desk

InterContinental Hotels Group next month will begin testing new technology at two Holiday Inns that lets guests use their smartphones to unlock their hotel-room door, Hotel Check-In has learned. IHG figures that many guests today already carry smartphones and some would enjoy the freedom to avoid the front desk.

"The holy grail item for us is to simplify the room-key hand-off moment at the hotel," IHG exec Bryson Koehler told me Friday. IHG thinks that the smartphone just might be the answer.

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"The proliferation of smartphones is growing in such a way that we have to look at what people are already bringing with them to make their stay more enjoyable," he said. "We don't need to burden people with additional items; it just clutters up their lives. The beauty of the smart phone is that they've already got it."

Starwood is taking a different path. At its Aloft Hotel in Lexington, Mass., where the company tests various new technologies, Starwood earlier this year gave participating travelers an Aloft-branded card that contains radio frequency identification, or RFID technology, to unlock doors. (Read more here.)

IHG's looking at RFID technology as well, but Koehler said that a this point he favors the smartphone technology - created by a company called Open Ways - because it's more convenient. The technology will work with most phones including the iPhone, Blackberry and Android phone.

Which IHG hotels will let me try out this technology?

IHG's getting ready to launch the test at the Holiday Inn Chicago O' Hare Rosemont and the Holiday Inn Express Houston Downtown Convention Center.

It will run a minimum of 60-90 days, but Koehler isn't promising when it will end. It could last through December. "We're staying very flexible on purpose as we see what the feedback is," he said.

Before the June launch, IHG still must finish building a special website where participating guests will go to register so they can receive confirmation emails. To join IHG's trial, participants will first need to download an Open Ways app on to their phone. Guests ultimately will call up the confirmation email on their smartphone and hold it up to a sensor on the door to unlock it.

If it works, the Open Ways app can work at any hotel, Koehler said. If rolled out more broadly among Holiday Inn hotels, only about 20% of a hotel's rooms would be equipped with special keyless door locks because it would be a choice for guests that would cost the hotel owner money, he said.

"We see this as an option: 'Do you want an Open Ways-enabled room?' If so, click the box," he said. "That way we can span the Baby Boomer who doesn't have the enabled phone to the Millenial who just wants to walk in and not talk to anybody."

Source: HOTELCheck-In