Hotel Doors Go High-Tech

by Rigel Celeste (RSS feed)
Feb 7th 2008 at 4:02PM

In the near future you may get to feel like you're in a Mission Impossible movie as you check into your hotel room by first providing a fingerprint and then standing still while a camera scans your iris. High-end hotels are forever seeking the next great thing when it comes to providing their customers with the best service and security, not to mention they're also always looking for new ways to save money and be more environmentally friendly in the process. The commonly used plastic key cards are on their way out in favor new options like paper cards, cell phone frequency identification, fingerprints, and iris scans.

It will be many years before any of these new features are widely available but many hotels are already trying out (or are in the slow process of switching exclusively to) these new high-tech methods, some of which are a little controversial (i.e. privacy is a concern when handing over fingerprints). What do you think -- great idea or don't fix what isn't broken?

Tags: fingerprint, fingerprints, hotel, hotels, key, key cards, KeyCards, room keys, RoomKeys, tech, technology, travel