Facial recognition, virtual reality, and cryptocurrency: How the hotel experience is changing

In 2022, we won't be opening hotel room doors with a plastic key card but rather our fingerprints.

Image: WAYHOME studio / Shutterstock

With the aim of making guests more comfortable during their stays and offering them peace of mind on the hygiene level through contactless exchanges, after nearly two years of disruptions due to the pandemic, the hotel industry is going all in on new technology in the hopes of offering a more customized experience for travelers. For future vacations, you should expect facial recognition, virtual reality, check-in via smartphone and payment by cryptocurrency to all be part of your hotel stay.  

Open the door to your hotel room through facial recognition

Forget the plastic, credit-card-like keys that you're used to receiving at the front desk of a hotel to enter your room. According to EHL, a leading hospitality educational group, the digital reinvention of the guest experience will be one of the major trends in 2022. The leading Swiss hospitality university urges hoteliers to implement facial recognition systems in their establishments, for the simple reason that travelers have become accustomed to using this technology with their smartphones. According to another report, issued by Open Geeks Lab, the facial recognition market is set to grow by 15.4% annually between 2021 and 2028. Similarly, some people prefer to unlock their cell phones using their fingerprint. So why shouldn't we have the same options for opening our hotel room door?

Choose a hotel with the help of virtual reality

What if you could select the hotel for your next trip not by scrolling through simple photos but by virtually walking through your potential room? Widely deployed in the real estate sector, this technology is set to be rolled out by an increasing number of hotels next year. And it makes sense since psychologically the travel experience starts from the very first moments of the search process for our next trip. According to the Lausanne hotel school, augmented reality will also help travelers project themselves into the vacation space and thus facilitate turning dreams of escaping to distant destinations into reality.

A host of new gadgets in your room

A wireless holder to charge your smartphone, instant access to the concierge through video link, control of the TV or the lights through voice recognition... If hotels actually get on board the trend of offering all these new forms of technology in their guestrooms, you might be feeling like you're in the world of Tony Stark. Equipping rooms with such tech will simplify the lives of guests, reports Open Geeks Lab, a Ukrainian company specializing in the creation of mobile applications.