Hotel Chain Plans Phone-Based Check-in and Room Access 120
GTRacer writes: Forbes reports that Hilton Worldwide, international hotel operator, is rolling out smartphone-based guest tools allowing self-service check-in, access to a virtual floorplan to select a room, and (in 2015) actual door access once checked in. The author states the drive for this technology is the growing influence of the swelling ranks of Millennials, who "[...] have a very strong inclination toward automated and self-service customer service." The security risks seem obvious, though.
Fucking anti-social Millennials (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm so sick of things being "automated" at the expense of the customer. Fucking Self-Checkouts everywhere - companies get to lay off a few dozen workers per location, replace with buggy scanning hardware & software. Sure it takes the customer a longer time, but that's just more time for them to look at impulse buy and sell their children more candy at the checkout. It's not making it any more convenient, or quick, for me or anyone else in line - it's making it so the anti-social behind the monitor type Millennials don't have to talk to actual people. My wife is one of those - she can't even make a fucking phone call if there's a chance company X has a "WebChat!"
But phone is a good thing too (Score:5, Interesting)
They've had automated check in in Europe for some hotels for 25 years. The locked entrance has an ATM-like machine in the little foyer. Put in your credit card, pick a room type, and it printed a slip with codes for the front door and your room.
And yes, they had a live person on site -- it ate my card and the call button got her out of bed at 3 am to get it. :)
More like "We don't want to hire milennials" (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't get what the article's author is thinking, exactly. There have been dozens upon dozens of articles written about how millennials aren't doing things - they aren't buying cars (except cheap used ones), they aren't buying houses, they aren't getting married. As someone who is under 30 and technically a millennial, I can attest to this. I know exactly zero people under the age of thirty who have jobs that pay $20 or more an hour - the highest I've seen is $17.50, for a girl who works one cube over from me.
I'm a temp who gets paid $10 an hour to do half the workload of a person who gets paid several times what I do and drives a Lexus to work, on top of some pointless data entry that is supposed to be done by an automated program (but isn't because they're taking forever to code it). Six months (and counting) at the same place, where I've been told I have exactly zero chance of ever getting hired on a permanent basis for actual money. I don't exactly make enough money to be financially independent, let alone go out on trips and stay at hotels. Between student loan payments, car insurance payments, and going back to school in the fall (I have a BA but it's not doing me any good) I have a net income of very, very little.
To me, this sounds more like "We had millenials working our hotels for minimum wage, let's get rid of them and replace them with an automated system. That way, we don't have to pay them."
Dude, this is the US (Score:2, Interesting)
Any "convenience" on our part is charged a fee even though it saves the business money in not having to hire someone to deal with it.
An exxample:
The Atlanta Symphony.
I could walk over and catch the person they hired to sell tickets during their limited hours - which isn't during my lunchtime - or I could buy on-line there by cutting out the overhead of a person and yet get charged for a "convenience" fee because I was forced to buy when there wasn't a clerk.
See?
Web shit saves money but yet I am charged for a "convenience" fee even though going through the web saves everyone time and money.
Yeah, Capitalism.
Oh! The Atlanta Ballet and symphony had the nerve to call me for donations.
They can get it out of their outsourced asses for all I fucking care!