Starwood Touts New Keyless Mobile Check-In App With Goofy Videos
The hotel company is raising awareness about a new feature on its loyalty program app.
Well, now that we can all buy stuff without phones using Apple Pay — excusing the few places that have sided with MCX’s CurrentC — why shouldn’t we be able to unlock doors with our phones? Oh wait, we can — with apps like Lockitron, August and Kevo.
But how about hotel room doors?
Years ago, all hotels switched to key cards that you would either slide in and out of a slot or place atop a sensor to open the door. Now, many hotels are moving toward getting rid of the key — and the check-in process that goes with obtaining that key — altogether.
One such hotel chain, Starwood Hotels & Resorts, is out with a new keyless key feature that’s been added to its Starwood Preferred Guest app. Inside the app, people can check in, as well as unlock their hotel room — all without ever having to wait in line at Check-In.
To promote this new feature, Starwood has teamed with New York-based creative content agency Plus, which crafted a series of humorous videos to tout the app’s new feature, which will work in the hotel brand’s W, Aloft and Element properties. It’s promoting the videos through its social media channels, such as these posts on Facebook and Twitter:
Open up the #spglife http://t.co/T3bAXwHXyZ https://t.co/QIPc85hXzB
— SPG (@spg) November 3, 2014
The videos center on the antics of a wedding party, a musical group, a shopaholic, a creepy kid on a tricycle right out of The Shining, a surprise party, some weird dancer, a group of flight attendants and some very competitive businessmen. Oh, and let’s not forget the sexually-charged couple who can’t get into the hotel room fast enough.
The videos point to spg.com/keyless where visitors can find out more about the app, how it works, and download it to their phones.
Below is a compilation of the videos:
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