Starwood's Keyless Entry Streamlines Hotel Check-In

Starwood's Keyless Entry Streamlines Hotel Check-In

Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide -- which owns and manages a number of high-end hotel brands including the St. Regis, The Luxury Collection, W, Westin, Le Méridien, Sheraton, Four Points by Sheraton, Aloft and Element -- on Tuesday announced the rollout of SPG Keyless, a tech offering that allows guests to use their smartphone as a room key.

Hilton introduced similar technology earlier this year.

Starwood's tech offering is available immediately, via the SPG app, at 10 Aloft, Element and W Hotels around the world.

The system will start rolling out more broadly in the first half of 2015; Starwood has set a year-end goal of installing SPG Keyless functionality in 30,000 doors in 150 hotels around the world.

The process of using SPG Keyless is straightforward: After booking a reservation at a keyless hotel, a guest is invited to opt in to SPG Keyless and register a phone through the SPG app. Then, one day before the scheduled arrival, the guest's room number and Bluetooth key are delivered via the app.


Upon arrival at the hotel, the guest can sail past the front desk and go immediately to the designated room. There, the guest opens the SPG app, taps the device on the door lock and waits for the green light.

Bypassing the Front Desk

The thinking behind this offering is that guests do not want to bother with a front desk. Also, by automating this routine transaction, hotel associates have more time for personalized interactions with the guests.

Starwood is no stranger to this dynamic. The company introduced Smart Check-In a few years ago in its Aloft hotels. That technology also allowed guests to bypass traditional check-in and access their rooms with an RFID-equipped key card.

There is a practical purpose for this offering, Andy Abramson, CEO of Comunicano, told CRM Buyer.

"People lose room keys all the time, but they likely don't lose their phone as much. By combining check-in with keyless entry, Starwood gives their customers convenience and saves them time," he reasoned.

It follows that if the hotel employees don't have to handle check-in, they can spend more time helping guests and providing better service. "Of course, if Starwood is simply doing this to reduce labor, then the guests will find themselves looking elsewhere," Abramson remarked.

The end result likely will be a greater sense of customer loyalty to the hotel, Lee Odess, general manager of Brivo Labs, told CRM Buyer.

"Guests who already feel loyal with a brand like Starwood will automatically feel even more connected when using the application, because it will tailor more to their wants and needs," he said. "Sacrificing the face-to-face interaction at Starwood's check-in desk could instead improve guest experience because it eliminates wasted time."

This offering is a textbook case of value-add disintermediation, said David Cadden, a professor emeritus at the Quinnipiac University School of Business.

"This example of extending the reach of the smartphone is fascinating," he told CRM Buyer. It provides additional convenience to the consumer with an acceptable level of risk. I imagine that this will be particularly popular among business travelers. They can book the hotel online, check in at their convenience and, if they have any concerns about the security of the Bluetooth key system, they can employ the provided safes within the hotel room."

The Security Question

Security likely will be the biggest cause for concern with this technology. Starwood Hotels effectively is issuing digital credentials to their guests with this offering, Authentify VP John Zurawski told CRM Buyer.

"The app on the phone becomes a digital credential capable of opening a door, the way a username and password will open a website," he said.

"A digital credential is only as strong as the registration process used to issue the credential. How Starwood verifies that the smartphone app is installed on a phone that belongs to the person claiming it as theirs is a critical function," Zurawski noted.

Typically, app registrations of this type that are tied to an identity and the creditworthiness of that identity will require a two-factor authentication process, he said.

"A phone call to the telephone number of the Preferred Guest account synchronized to the app activation would be one way," suggested Zurawski. "New registrations would require a little checking against the billing address for the phone to ensure an imposter wasn't registering under someone else's name."