OpenKey launched its free mobile application that allows keyless entry to hotel rooms via a guest’s smartphone. The application serves as a modern solution and universal system for hotel room access with the idea strongly backed by HOFTEL, a leading association of hotel property investors that represents thousands of hotel properties and hundreds of thousands of hotel rooms worldwide. Many of HOFTEL’s leading members plan only to purchase OpenKey compatible locks for their hotels starting in June 2015.
OpenKey is designed as an open source service that works with different types of existing guest room electronic locks (RFID, NFC and Bluetooth-based locks) already available at most hotels. This also means OpenKey provides a single mobile application to open guest room doors at any participating hotel, so customers won’t have to download every application for the various hotel brands they frequent.
“Hotels and guests alike will find a new level of convenience and function in the OpenKey application,” explained Catherine Smith, director of digital strategy at OpenKey. “We have created a new solution that truly caters to the needs of both the individual hotels and the end-user. Guests benefit from the ease of keyless entry, while hotels reduce their administrative workload and increase efficiencies for front-desk staffing.”
OpenKey’s open platform brings global industry standards to its mobile technology, allowing hotel owners to launch their own keyless room entry system without changing their current infrastructure and other mobile services. OpenKey’s opt-in service includes a bank-level encryption that also grants guests the ability to safely share, or revoke, key access to their rooms as needed.
OpenKey further protects hotel owners’ best interest in this emerging technology by offering hotels the assurance that they hold their customers’ data and information, rather than allowing online travel agencies or other third-parties to collect data on their valued customers around the world. OpenKey will be controlled by hotel real estate owning companies to ensure that it remains true to this goal.
