Mobile hotel app to offer keyless room entry

A mobile hotel booking app is to introduce a feature which will allow users to unlock the doors to their hotel rooms using their phones instead of a key or card.

Hoteltonight, which provides mobile booking of same-day unsold hotel inventory, recently announced a slew of new features at Google I/O in San Francisco.

Among them is ‘Keyless Entry’, which will enable users to unlock their hotel rooms with the app on Android devices using NFC (near field communication) and technology from Brivo Labs.

All users will have to do is hold the device up to the lock and the door will automatically unlock after a few seconds. According to Hoteltonight, this will eliminate the inconvenience of demagnetised keys.

“HotelTonight and Brivo Labs are in talks with several global hotel chains to debut this feature in the future,” the company said.

Another new feature for the app is ‘Express Check-In’, which allows users to check-in ahead of time with just two taps. It is currently in pilot with select hotels.

Hoteltonight is currently available at around 400 destinations across the world, although at present none of them are in the Middle East.