“This keyless entry is becoming more and more popular, particularly from a business traveller point of view so you can bypass the desk. A true road warrior wants to just get through it,” says Butt of Dream Hotels Group, which is piloting keyless entry in its Hollywood, Los Angeles property. However, some hotels Business Traveller Asia-Pacific spoke to were wary of the implementation costs and benefit to guests. “We don’t really see guests screaming for this technology as long as your existing access is working well,” says Cecilia Lo, executive assistant manager, sales and marketing at the Grand Hyatt Hong Kong.
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While all new Hyatt hotels are “embracing this technology”, existing hotels will look at market demand when weighing up the cost-benefit of installing it, she says. Moreover, keyless check-in can cause issues with managing capacity. Rooms may still not be ready, despite the guest having checked in with the app – defeating a major point of the technology.
“Hotels may therefore only allocate keyless entry to a certain percentage of
inventory,” says John Drummond, resident manager at the Intercontinental Grand Stanford Hong Kong, which does not have keyless check-in.
The Sherwood Taipei, a boutique luxury hotel in the Taiwanese capital, still issues guests with physical keys on a keychain, and does not even have plastic keycards. General manager
Achim von Hake describes this as part of the hotel’s “philosophy”, and says implementing keyless technology would be “a long-term investment”.
“We are evaluating market trends and keyless technology will be a future direction,” he says. However, some say guests may also be loath to
download a dedicated app simply to unlock their rooms. “I’ve got 10,000 blooming apps on my phone,” says Dream Hotels’ Butt. “It’s got to be easier so that for each task you’re not having to download another app, or do something so specific that, once you’ve used it, you probably won’t use it again for however long.”
AP RIL 20 19
Handy smartphones can be found in over 5,000 hotels and 650,000 rooms around the world
Christopher Chan, general manager of research and technology, The Hongkong and Shanghai Hotels, which owns and operates The Peninsula Hotels, says that “having a QR code to access a web-based app will be the way to go if guests would like to use their own phone or tablet”. In Hong Kong, the JW Marriott plans to implement keyless technology this year, though it doesn’t have an exact launch date yet. “My personal take is not that a huge percentage will use it, but that a certain number will – and that will increase once they get used to a certain technology,” says the hotel’s general manager Silvio Rosenberger. He compares it to digital boarding passes at airports: some passengers were initially slow to accept that technology, but eventually came around when they realised how convenient it can be. Rosenberger adds that since the JW Marriott’s keyless check-in will be done on the Marriott Bonvoy app (which has several other functions), guests won’t be annoyed at having to download an app for a single purpose.
IN-ROOM SMARTPHONES Most Business Traveller readers will by now probably have encountered a Handy smartphone in their hotel room. The devices are in over 5,000 hotels and 650,000 rooms globally, according to data provided by Hi Inc, the company behind Handy. The smartphone allows visitors to make unlimited local and international calls, as well as access the internet. It can also create a wifi hotspot for other connected devices like the traveller’s own smartphone, iPad or laptop.
Dream Hotels’ Butt is critical of Handy smartphones, saying they are “not user- friendly” and that he was bombarded by unwanted ads when using the device. “This Handy phone became a bit of a nuisance that I was having to carry around.
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