Holiday Inn Wants to Let You Open Your Hotel Door with Your Smartphone

Posted by | 05/26/2010 | 3 Comments

The parent group for Holiday Inn, InterContinental Hotels Group, is looking to get you into your hotel room more quickly. Two Holiday Inns will be testing a system that allows you to use your SmartPhone to unlock your room, allowing you to avoid the front desk check in logjam entirely. It looks like the test hotels will be the Chicago O’ Hare Rosemont and the Holiday Inn Express Houston Downtown Convention Center.

The system is still being worked on, and it will require users to download an app called Open Ways to their Smartphone. If it is rolled out further, officials say not every room would work this way and it would be an option, given the cost to owners to make the system available.

Via Hotel Check-In

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Category: Mobile

About the Author (Author Profile)

Warner Crocker is a professional theatre director, producer and playwright and also a Tablet PC enthusiast. He is also a Microsoft MVP for Tablet PCs. Send email to Warner.
  • Tom Beebe

    There are endless opportunities for a universal remote to serve many functions hardly thought of yet. Here’s an example: I carry a remote control for my ZOUNDS hearing aids, as well as my cell phone. This remote adjusts the aids by emitting coded sounds. Couldn’t an app be written to eliminate one piece of hardware in my pocket? On the other hand, my phone (a LG NV) is so small I find myself fumbling through my pockets for it when it rings (rings is still the right term for it, no?). Why not a model with a concave back and strap to wear on one’s wrist? Use with a Bluetooth ear piece and stop the fumbling. Shades of Dick tracy, I know, but the common thread between these several comments is a deficit of imagination in a “leading edge” industry.

  • Tom Beebe

    OK, it’s hard to keep up. After the above post I read in another blog about a proposal to wrap the new flexible touchscreens around your wrist. Now, if ZOUNDS is listening…

  • Darrel

    Another opportunity for hackers to crack locks and violate your privacy.. Literally.

    Thinking about it again though, it’s possible to forge those keycards that so widely used. I guess if people want to get in, they’ll find a way – no matter what the lock is.

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