Many hotels and rental accommodations do not have reception desks that are open 24 hours. Because of the limited reception desk, guests may have to make complicated arrangements to get their key for an AirBnB or they may have to flex their travel itinerary to ensure that they arrive at a specific time that may make their trip more expensive or inconvenient.
These complicated arrangements may include the use of a night telephone service that a guest has to ring up when onsite. In some instances, the telephone service provides the guest a code to open a lockbox to retrieve a metal key out of the safe to open their room door. Often these lockboxes do not have changeable codes so a guest could come back at another time and possibly become a security concern to future guests. These arrangements are not secure, cost the property manager money to pay the night telephone service, and time.
In other cases, managers that don't have reception desks open 24 hours a day have to make arrangements to meet guests on or off site, through a Real Estate agency, or a local shop to give metal keys to guests to open their room doors after hours. Some hotels go as far as placing a metal key in an unlocked letterbox and tell guests pick up an envelope containing that key after hours to allow themselves access to their room. Whatever the arrangement, short of having a costly 24 hour reception desk, property managers and hotel owners have to create solutions that are usually insecure and inconvenient.
With an NB IoT smart lock powered by Digital Keys, a hotel or property manager can completely forgo the need to have a reception desk at all!
By providing a completely digital platform to manage locks and access to rooms in real-time, a manager can verify guests who have booked and paid for their accommodation and can grant access to allow a guest to get into their room without having to worry about the complicated arrangements to pick up the metal key. In addition, a guest that has not booked and paid for an accommodation they can simply use their mobile phone to book when they are onsite. Because of the integration that Digital Keys has into Online Travel Agencies such as Expedia and Booking.com, guests can even book instantly through their favorite services and receive a key directly to their phone, skip the check-in line, and go straight to their booked room.
To ensure real-time awareness of the digital activities in the rooms, the owner or property manager can manage all bookings through their connected digital platform that has Digital Keys key management software easily integrated into everyday operations. Additionally, without the need to have to spend capital on managing a reception desk and the ability to closely monitor room occupancy, managers can better schedule staff to keep the hotel running efficiently, and facilitating maximizing occupancy to keep the hotel accessible and more attractive for future guests.