RFID In Hospitality

Imagine this.You’re planning a vacation. You go online and book and pay for the hotel room. They send you an SMS to your mobile phone to confirm your booking. You answer it, and there’s a link to their site. Clicking on it downloads your hotel key to your phone. Well, what actually happens is that you download a encrypted keycode to your NFC RFID-enabled cell phone. So when you arrive at the hotel, you don’t need to check in. You already have the “key” stored on your phone as an encrypted code. All you do is wave your phone close to the hotel room door lock, and voila.

That’s the type of functionality that VingCard is offering with its new Signature RFID system for the hospitality industry. The system uses a type of RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology called NFC, Near Field Communication, and occasionally referred to as “contactless”. The actual technology in Signature RFID is from NXP, formerly known as Philips Semiconductors

Pros

• Systems like Signature RFID offer a great deal of convenience for weary travellers that don’t want to stand in line.
• If you have an NFC-enabled phone, you can also make contactless payments in some European and Asian cities for transit, movie theatres, parking, and other products and services.

Cons

• Very few mobile phones are RFID/NFC-enabled. Those that are are typically only available in parts of Europe and Asia.
• What if there are two people travelling together? If one doesn’t want to be the other’s shadow, they’re both going to need the keycode. That means the system needs to have backup contactless keycards to hand out to extra guests.
• What if you lose your phone? Phones are much more liable to be misplaced than keys, since the latter stays securely in your pocket most of the time. Again, there are probably backup keycards. To bad for your phone, though.
• What’s wrong with a key? Adding new technology to a hotel means an increased cost of operation.

Overall, this is a great technological innovation in hospitality services. It’s just too bad that not everyone can enjoy it just yet. Of course, someone is going to suggest that if we all just became cyborgs and had a microchip implanted into us, we wouldn’t have to worry about losing our phones or whatever else.