Hotel technology works great until you want to eat
I love to see how businesses utilize technology. Some get it right. Some miss the boat. And some are stuck somewhere in the middle. Like last week when the hotel I stayed at issued my room key as one of those electronic credit card thig-a-ma-jigs. I love these things. I always feel like a secret agent when I enter my room by inserting the card and waiting for the light to turn green.
I even love the security of these cards since nowhere on the card is your room number printed. The downside to this of course is when you can't remember your room number the first day of your vacation!
These cards have several other advantages over their metal key predecessors like the fact that they don't need to be returned to the hotel when you checkout (I for one, kept mine as a souvenir). This is because the identification number on the key card is associated with a record of your room on the hotel's computer. So if you try using the card after you have checked out, it simply won't work. Beats changing the locks or charging guests for unreturned keys.
Cool key cards and 10-page printouts don't mix
But here's where I get confused. Every time my wife and I ate at a restaurant in the hotel, the first thing the host would do is ask us for our room number. And after I gave him our room number, he would proceed to look through a 10-page, stapled printout to make sure that the room number I said was a valid room number. I'm not even sure what valid room number means since half the time the host never asked or verified our name. But once he was satisfied that we were entitled to eat at the restaurant (it was an all inclusive resort) he would scribble something down on the printout and then walk us to our table.
This completely baffled me. Mostly because during this entire procedure I always had my nifty credit card key in my pocket. Wouldn't it be a lot easier to just walk up to the host, hand him my room key and have him swipe it on an electronic reader? The computer could easily spit back that I am a valid guest, display my name on the screen and even update a database to indicate that I ate at that particular restaurant and at what time of day.
If Disney can do, it so can you
Perhaps the IT staff at the hotel I stayed at should all take a trip to Disney World. If memory serves, even the McDonald's on the Disney property accepts your room key as payment.
I guess this is why a techie can never truly take a vacation (sigh).
4 comments for this blog post so far...
March 01, 2009 at 8:25 pm
Jon Inge
In fact, some resort point-of-sale (POS) workstations will do this; it just requires the POS software to be able to display the information it reads on the card. Almost all POS systems check the main hotel system to verify the name of a guest wishing to charge the meal to his or her room number, but it usually requires the cashier to key in the room number. Only a few systems (so far) can read the data off a guest’s keycard and use that to post the charge. You must have been unfortunate enough to find a hotel that either didn’t have these two systems interfaced or chose to use a hard copy print out instead, perhaps for speed if they were cursed with a slow network. But you’re right, these things ought to be much more seamless, and a bunch of us in the industry (I’m a hotel tech consultant) are working hard to make this happen. Check out the http://www.htng.org Web site for example. Happy travels!
March 03, 2009 at 10:21 am
Patric Welch
@Jon: I thought it should be that easy. Thanks for your input!
March 06, 2009 at 9:02 pm
Marla
Our resort was even easier, they put these lovely black wrist bands on us for the whole week. We noticed some people had black bands, some had bright orange or neon green. Well it indicated what level of inclusive rate you had purchased, we were full service - in the black as it were. It made things simple but not at all fashion forward. But lets get real, after a day and half on the beach I didnt curl my hair or step into any of those high heels I took with me so what did it matter anyway. It was just like a grand Chucky Cheese!!
March 11, 2009 at 9:56 pm
Patric Welch
@Marla: I could just picture the “class” system in place when reading your comment. “Oh, I see you have a neon green band. Let me put you over here by the kitchen.” LOL
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