Can the Innovation be Put into Practice?

Hotel Technology Next Generation is a global trade association that fosters partnership among hoteliers and technology providers. On March 3rd, it awarded the first ever Most Innovative Hospitality Award to MTech for the REX Room Expeditor product.
REX is an app which integrates iPhone or iPod Touch with Property Management System (PMS) to inform room attendants “what is the next most important room for them to clean”. With this tool, the process of assigning room cleaning can be streamline, getting guests into their rooms faster.

With so many benefits of this innovation, such as turning rooms faster, improving guest experience by reducing wait time, saving time, paper, and money etc., can REX be put into practice? As far as I know, many hotels don’t allow room attendants to carry phones with them when they are at work. One of the reasons for that is to reduce external interference. However, with iPhone or iPod Touch’s personalized entertainment function, people can easily install apps, games, songs and so on into these smart devices. If every room attendant has an iPhone or iPod Touch that with their favorites games or songs, I believe it could be a big distraction for their work. But when there is a problem, there is always a solution. I will say the solution is to develop an app which can prevent installing or downloading other sources to the iPhone or iPod Touch or design a device that only for using REX.

Seeing Future Hotel Room from the House of the Future

Living Tomorrow, a company founded by a Belgian entrepreneur, specializes in high-tech consumer goods. It exhibited its “House of the Future” in Brussels in 2008. With the objective of making life easier, everything can be controlled with a touch of fingertip in this future house.

There are some features that we can see the future hotel room from this house:

You can warm up the shower before you stepped out of bed.

You can watch news, listen to the music or check the weather report when you brush your teeth in front of the “smart” mirror.

You can control everything on touch screens…

Take a look at a vision of how we might live in years to come!!!

Open Hotel Door with a Touch on Your Smartphone

Checking in at the Front Desk is the first thing we need to do when we arrive at the hotel, so that we can get in our rooms with the keys provided by the front desk agent. Sometimes we get mad and complain about the long wait for checking in. However, with the innovation, an application for smartphone allows travelers to check-in remotely, by Openways, we can just bypass the front desk and open the door to our room by simply pressing our Iphone, Blackerry or Android, meaning less hassle when we arrive at the hotel.

OpenWays, the mobile solution provider that developed the world's first crypto acoustic solution for check-in/out and room access via any guest's mobile phone in February. This ubiquitous solution uses the principle of Crypto Acoustic Credential and text messaging to very securely deliver a key to the right user anywhere in the world. The solution is compatible with the major electronic-locking systems and access-control systems.

The system works by sending a digitally encrypted bleep to the door locking mechanism from any smartphone. Guests would receive a code when they bypass the front desk that works with an application on their smartphone.
Some major hotel chains and casinos in North America and Europe are currently preparing for the introduction of their first mobile key service with OpenWays.

I look forward to try this new technology to access to my hotel room for next trip:)