Hilton Hotels turn iPhones into room keys

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hiltoncheckin

Hilton Hotels is planning to turn your iPhone into the ultimate control center for your entire hotel stay by allowing guests to check-in, choose an exact room, and even unlock your room, straight from its app.

The company announced its digital enhancements for the hotel experience will be available globally for over 650,000 rooms, at more than 4,000 hotels by the end of 2014, ensuring you won’t have to interact with a single human being the next time you stay at their hotels.

Travelers will be able to check-in at 6AM the day before a reservation, and select a their preferred room through a floor plan map or list of available rooms. You’ll also be able to see photo galleries of rooms and make special requests and purchase room upgrades in the app, which is a huge win for travelers, according Hilton Worldwide CEO, Christopher J. Nassetta:

“Travelers can use their smartphones as boarding passes to get to their seats on an airplane, so it is only natural that they will want to use them as a way to enter their hotel rooms. We have spent the past few years testing a number of different options to make this vision a reality, and we are developing proprietary technology that is safe and reliable for our guests to use, and cost-effective for our hotels to install.”

Hilton is allowing guests to checkout with their smartphones, but you won’t be able to by-pass the front desk altogether until next year, when the company is scheduled to install the tech for guests to unlock doors with their smartphones. For now you’ll have to drop by the desk to at least pick up your key.

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