Earlier this week the media reported instances of outsourcing hotel check-ins to virtual agents based overseas.

At the front desk, guests were welcomed by tall screens displaying virtual front-desk employees, allegedly based in India, who performed the check-in procedures.

Is outsourcing the check-in function an approach worth following by the industry?

I believe this is the wrong approach and hospitality already has a far more elegant solution than this attempt to solve labor shortages and save on payroll expenses. It’s called mobile check-in.

Mobile check-ins with room selection and mobile key are already a fact at many hotel chains, avant-guards hotel brands and independents. You walk in the hotel lobby, go straight to the elevators and your room. No front desk, no lines waiting for a receptionist to do what you can accomplish in 1 minute on your smartphone.

You don’t need front desk staffed with overworked, overstressed, undertrained and underpaid humans or outsourced to virtual agents residing at the other end of the world.

Less than 1/3 of hotels around the world today offer some kind of mobile check-in. Steep costs for mobile keys-enabled room door locks, fragmented hospitality industry and security and privacy concerns are some of the issues.

Typically, hotels use two types of mobile check-in and mobile key approaches:

• Mobile check-in 24- or 48- hours prior arrival, followed by issuance of a mobile key, which is send via message or email to the guest. You need special kind of door locks which are expensive and not all hotels have this capital expense in their budgets. Hilton, Marriott use this approach.

• Mobile check-in 24- or 48- hours prior arrival, followed y message or email directing you to go to the front desk to pick up your key upon arrival or to a room key station in the lobby of the hotel. At the key station you enter your reservation number or scan a QR code and the station issues you a physical key card. Las Vegas hotels use this approach on a massive scale.

The main issues with mobile keys are:

• Mobile key-enabled room door locks are fairly expensive. There are some vendors offering devices that turn classic locks into mobile-enabled locks.

• The mobile-enabled locks are part of mobile key security and guest privacy systems interfaced with the PMS that vine at a price.

Recently, at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas I witnessed these huge lines of guests waiting to be checked in, while the hotel offered mobile check-in in combination with key station in the lobby to issue you a physical room keycard. Of course we used this option. Someone from the line asked me “Wow, how did you do that?” I showed him and he was one happy customer!

Obviously hotels need to educate their customers of the benefits of mobile check-in better!

Max Starkov
Hospitality & Online Travel Tech Consultant & Strategist

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