We use our telephones for everything these days that it reminds me of the old science fiction movies where they even took your temperature with a device they   spoke into.  Most of us do not wear wristwatches anymore to tell time and most of us track all our banking and stock market trading on our phones.  They thought of   something else they can do with our portable phones.  It seems to all be in an effort to create a paperless and now card free   society.  I am talking about greeting cards and all the plastic we used to carry in our wallets.

Some of the plastic we used to carry in our wallets
included hotel key cards.  We can deal them out soon since there has been an app created to replace them.  The hotel room key may become as obsolete as the brass room key it replaced.  Door lock   vender's have developed the technology to let smart phones function as keys, and the   hotel industry is starting to experiment with it.  The keys are activated through smart phone apps.  When guests check in through the app, the hotel sends them their hotel room   numbers and enables the   phones to act as virtual keys.  Does that mean I don’t have to talk to someone at the hotel lobby?  Will that job disappear too?

Sensors in the door can detect and verify the phone through technology such as Blue tooth.  There’s no need to wait in line at the front desk. “We’re eliminating keys!” says Phil Dumas the President of UniKey, which is partnering with Miwa Lock to offer key less entry, said at last week’s HITEC Hospitality Technology Conference.  This is a boom and completely new change to the security business as a whole.  Imagine the surge of   business for these companies as locks across the world disappear into just being scanners.

Starwood Hotels & Resorts is testing virtual keys on IPhones and Androids at the Aloft Harlem in New York and Aloft Cupertino   in California. The Aloft chain of hotels is a perfect place to try out something techno new since the chain caters to the young preppie technologically   suave   traveler. I stay at this chain of hotels and like its   sleek modern look. Intercontinental Hotels and Marriott are not testing mobile keys but have introduced mobile check-in which lets guests   bypass   the front desk.  Marriott offers both mobile check-in and check-out at 500 hotels, and plans to expand it.  Yes folks, it is a changing world again where someday you can also use this as A Remember When Story about plastic key   entries into rooms.

Hotel Tonight, a last-minute room-booking mobile   app, said it would offer mobile check-in and “key-less entry” powered by Brivo Labs on Android devices. The technology won’t work unless the hotels installs compatible hardware on their door locks.  Hotel Tonight says it is in talks with major global hotel brands to adopt the   technology.  The problem is that change costs money.  That’s probably   what   has held up the widespread use of virtual keys.  Hotel companies have been reluctant to invest in changing or retrofitting locks.

Despite the challenges, Robert Cole, the founder of Rock Cheetah, a hotel marketing strategy and travel tech consulting firm, said most hotels will adopt key less entry in the next 5 to 10 years.  Several door-lock   companies, such as OpenWays and Yikes, showed off key less capabilities at  HITEC.  There are people who go to these trade shows just to find the next big thing.  Investor type of people who simply want to make a lot of money in the stock market.  But Peter Klebanoff, senior vice president of business development for the Americas at OpenWays, and others say hotels don’t have to replace door-locks; adaptors can be installed.

So it is the day after the 4^th of July.  A day we clean up after the party, the celebrations and we have time to reflect on how great this country really is.  We still have the dreamers and innovators here to always think of something new.  Honey!  Just keep your phone charged so we can get into our hotel room.  It sounds weird but get used to it.  Now if we could only find an easier way to charge our phones.  They would be fully charged if both every time we say something stupid or did something dumb on the phone would create some power.