Using Your Smartphone as Your Hotel Room Key

If you're staying at the Aloft Hotel in New York City or Silicon Valley, you'll soon be able to use your smartphone as your room key.

Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide is adding a "virtual room key" to its Starwood app in hopes that it can help make the checkin process less of a hassle.

Rather than waiting on a long line to get your key from the front desk at the hotel, users can check in and set their payment method on the app. The app then becomes your room key.

Starwood's CEO Frits van Paasschen told The Wall Street Journal that he believes this new feature will "become the new standard for how people will want to enter a hotel." He concedes that the idea might "be a novelty at first" but said he thinks "it will become table stakes for managing a hotel." Read more...