ҹɫֱ²¥

Transcript

Introduction to door locks in hospitality
 
So today, we're doing a slightly different Matt Talks because it's actually Matt and Adam talk. Just because I love, talking to Adam, we we often have a catch up and we end up talking about all the ideas that we have about innovation and hospitality. But one of the topics that for years we've been chatting about, is is door locks, and it's probably one of the most painful parts of a hotel. Like like, the hardware is often really old and you invest in it and then it sits in your hotel for ten, twenty years, And then that blocks some of the innovation.
 
So I thought it was important that we just dig deep on this topic so that everyone understands what's the challenges are of the past, but also how can you lift your your tech stack or your hardware stack into the future to enable very different guest experience.
 
Adam, do you wanna just briefly introduce who you are, and and why why locks? Why do you care about locks?
 
Yeah. Definitely. So I'm Adam, everyone. I'm one of the product directors at ҹɫֱ²¥, and I look after the guest experience drive. And, door locks fall under that, because guests interact with them and that's how they get into their room for the first time after they've done their their check-in experience.
 
And, yeah, door locks. We've been speaking about it for a very, very long time. We talk about this every month for the past seven years I've been at ҹɫֱ²¥, and there's been a bit of innovation in this space.
 
So we can cover that today.
 
Nice. So what I wanted to do is I I wanna break our conversation to three major blocks so that we really form have a structure to it. So first, let's just talk about the basics of door locks, then really looking at what are some of the best door locks that you can find in the market today. And, obviously, there's a lot of marketplace partners, but there's real differences between different vendors that we have.
 
And then lastly, I want to talk about, the digital key and specifically the ҹɫֱ²¥ digital key and why did we think we had to go and and build our own, key solution end to end. But
 
let's start with the basics. Can you just explain maybe, I remember, you know, when I started in hotels, our did those plastic keys had to go inside the door? And then over time, they graduated to the RFID lock that we have today.
 
But I still often go to receptionist. Like, oh, my key doesn't work. And they're like, oh, you know, it's because of your it's your cell phone. I'm like, I don't think it is.
 
But I don't know if it is. But maybe you can enlighten us.
 
Yeah. Yeah. Funny. So we went from the punch card locks, which had all the plastic with a little bit of holes on there. Then we went to magnetic, magnetic cards.
 
How old are you? Punch card lock. I've never seen life in in a real hotel.
 
I have. In Paris in twenty sixteen was when I saw one of these punch card locks. Yeah. So they're still around.
 
And that was like the first hotel door lock. But then we went to magnetic cards. And on that point, you were saying about, you know, reception says keep away from your mobile phone. That is an issue with these magnetic cards. It's called, coast, coercivity, and that, like, determines the amount of magnetic force. So, when you look at the strip on, like, your credit card, it's black. But then on these hotel cards, they're brown because they need to be rewritten all the time.
 
So it is still a case if you have those magnetic cards, but we're seeing less and less of those now as people move to to RFID locks.
 
And as well, no one should still be running those magnetic locks because all of the door lock vendors have, like, easy upgrade modules for you. So you don't need to replace everything. It's just the actual, electronics there.
 
Because the so if you have one of those magnetic door locks, like, the there's big boxes often on the door. You what you're saying is you can rip it you can take it off, and then you can replace it with an RFID lock from the same vendor or from a different vendor?
 
Mainly from the same vendor because they know all the measurements and everything. And, yes, you can keep the majority of, like, the metal hardware that's there, and you undo a few screws and then you put in the upgrade module, which is RFID.
 
Got it. Because one of the the the major challenges with doors of hotels are fire safety. I think Yeah.
 
You have worked before.
 
Right?
 
Yeah. Exactly. Like the the, the mortise that goes into the doors, the big chunky bit of metal that actually opens, that's routed in and it's fitting perfectly. So there's no air in there, and that door can be fire rated. So if you rip that out and replace it with something smaller, you've then compromised fire rating of that door. So, that's why it can be very, very expensive for you to really change everything, because you might actually have to replace the actual door. So, you wanna do it the easiest and cheapest way possible for sure.

Chapter
Challenges with battery-powered locks
 
And then and then as there you've got differences in battery life. So some door doors have wiring, which would allow you you'd they do not have batteries, and some have batteries. But I think more are batteries, probably, I would assume.
 
Yeah. Mainly batteries because the majority of hotels are, older buildings, and no one had that, you know, foresight to run cabling in. But now on a lot of new builds, what you would do is you would run, ethernet cables, so network cabling to the actual wall. And you you would have on the wall a nice reader and then the, the strike part. So, the side that your door closes into, that's electronic rather than the actual door handle being electronic.
 
But you only see that in a brand new build, because you got So the physical lock is actually not on the door, but it's in the wall, and then it just unlocks the the device on the door.
 
But, actually, there's no battery there anymore.
 
Yep. Exactly.
 
That's also great too because then you can do all sorts of monitoring, you know, seeing when the doors open, how many times it's opening and closing. You can do all sorts of, great data data analysis on that because when the actual electronics is on the door side, they're often not connected and online because that will drain the battery life if they keep having to report up to a server somewhere.
 
So if you're a hotelier that has one of those ones with a battery, how often, do you have to replace a battery? Do you have any idea?
 
Yeah.
 
It depends on how how often the door's being used, but the the what a lot of the vendors say is about every three months is when you need to change. And, and, you know, it's it's not something that you need to do on sort of a maintenance schedule because the door locks tell you, when you tap your key, instead of a flashing green, it will flash yellow a few times. And that tells then housekeeping, hey. Please let maintenance know that they need to, replace the batteries in this card.
 
That's a real challenge operationally. Right? Because it's a disconnected lock. It's just a lock that sits on your door. So you have to now rely on the housekeeper having a way to have a workflow to report back to maintenance person to come and replace it.
 
Absolutely. On some of the vendors that have mobile keys, when you unlock the door with a mobile phone, it can actually report back to the mobile phone and say this is the battery health. And then that's how you update the server and can alert people. But generally, we're relying on the housekeepers to say, hey.
 
Please change the, the battery in this lock. Right. When that doesn't happen, when they do forget to to let maintenance know and it does drain, you, there's you every maintenance person in the hotel has this long metal this long metal coat hanger thing that they put under the door to pull the handle from the inside. That's usually in their toolkit.
 
That is crazy.
 
So, if I have one of those magnetic, door locks where I put the key inside the door and a lot of hotels still have this today, which is just crazy if you think about it because those are from the eighties, from the nineties, I think. Do you know?
 
Were you born?
 
Someone can search Wikipedia and leave it in the comments.
 
There you go. But like if you wanted to upgrade that to an RFID, is it expensive? Do you have any sense of what it would cost?
 
The yeah, it's, I can't It's probably a couple hundred bucks.
 
There's so many per door.
 
There's yeah. So many variables. The the doors are not necessarily the expensive bit. It's when you start doing the modules that are in the elevator and you need to start involving the elevator technicians.
 
Those hard readers that are on the outside doors, Those more complex ones, that's when it gets a bit pricey.
 
But the actual each door in a normal hotel in a room isn't super, super expensive. And I've heard very you know, every company charges different every door lock vendor, but I've heard prices of about thirty to fifty dollars per door before.
 
Yeah. And that's up. And if you really have no door locks and you have to install brand new locks, that's a couple of hundreds of euros that you have to pay for the door lock and all your lifts and everything. So it's it is quite a big investment, and that's why probably hotels wait quite a long time, ten to twenty years to sometimes replace these locks. But it's also the cause of why you can't have digital keys in hotel in most hotels still today because they're sitting on these legacy locks. And if you wanna enable mobile and all of those things, you've gotta lift it into the cloud in some way.

Chapter
The power of digital keys
 
Yep. Absolutely. You have to have the modern locks.
 
To be able to do any sort of digital key that comes out.
 
So so we've really struggled on the integration side. So we we have an open API and and we basically said to the world saying, hey. We've got an API. It's on our website.
 
Just integrate with it. And most vendors did, except for the door lock vendors. And it's been such a nightmare trying to get connectivity with the door locks in hotels. What's what's in your opinion, the biggest pain?
 
Yeah. There's a few things. One, that there is no, standard sort of communication that these all these different door lock companies use, and they all have their different, different protocols. Another thing is that these, these older door lock softwares are on prem.
 
So we need to have this piece of software that sits in the middle that converts clouds then on premise and then and then back up.
 
And the actual, the actual, you know, connection, to that isn't so hard, but it's the the time you have to spend to have someone install that, configure it, make sure the door lock names are mapped. So if it's in if it's one zero one in the PMS, but then it's zero one zero one in the lock software, someone needs to go through and do that.
 
Yeah. Because because we're basically in the cloud, and we don't really talk to hardware on-site. So we don't really know. We're sitting somewhere in a server room somewhere in Ireland or Amsterdam, wherever the server sits on Microsoft, But we don't know how to connect to these on premise, like, door kind of software that communicates with the the encoders.
 
So we had to figure out a way to have a local instance of ҹɫֱ²¥. So we had to basically build an on premise app so that we can talk to these really, you know, old kind of technologies on-site and printers and door locks or some of that. So that's how we built a ҹɫֱ²¥ Connector.
 
But that breaks down because, you know, the local network is sometimes unstable or Windows updates.
 
I remember our first like, in the early days, I was still installing hotels myself. And I would be like, where's your door lock, computer installed? And they just don't know because it was installed when the hotel opened, you know, a decade ago. And then no one's ever touched that computer.
 
And then it was firewalled till we come in and we have to, you know, install something behind a firewall. And it it took us such a long time to get this done. Luckily, it's got a lot easier now, with modern locks. But because hotels are so still running on these old door vendors and locks, it is unfortunately still often a pain.
 
Absolutely. And that's where the cloud door lock software is so much easier, for us to connect to, a lot more reliable. That connection doesn't go down ever.
 
And as well, they're using modern APIs too. A lot of these old door lock softwares, you know, they were written a very, very long time ago. So they're using these old communication protocols.
 
So, yeah, modern software is the way to go.
 
Because I thought that there was a protocol that most vendors use, like a common protocol.
 
They like to say there is, but there are so many variances between them.
 
So there's like a standard, but everyone deviates from the standard. So every lock you integrate with, even though it follows the standard, we have to slightly rewrite it. Exactly. Yeah. There isn't a simple bullet, unfortunately.
 
Right. Maybe that's something that we should write in the future. But we we've got bigger challenges to to to solve for, I guess. Right. So that gets us the basics of door locks and the differences between the old one, the magnetic keys, and then the RFID keys.
 
To enable a digital key just to finish the basics, would that work with RFID, or would you then need to upgrade to yet another type of lock?
 
Yes and no. So, it depends on how the, digital key is communicating. So, a lot of the digital keys are communicating using Bluetooth. So if there's no Bluetooth chip in the in the door, then no.
 
But the the newer digital key that we're seeing with the wallets, they are using, NFC. So, a lot of the RFID locks they can communicate with still.
 
Yeah. Got it.
 
So it it varies, and it varies vendor to vendor as well.
 
Of course, it does. So as as you, start to deploy these little keys, but you've got those RFID locks on on top of the door, so the battery driven ones, does this drain the battery faster than the typical plastic RFID keys that you hold against it?
 
No. It doesn't. Because, those locks are sitting there and they're they're asleep. Right? So they're not draining a little bit of power. They're they're draining when they're just sitting there asleep. And when something touches it, and wakes it up, that's when it starts broadcasting its radios and starts draining the battery.
 
And it's only turning on and processing for such a short amount of time, that no. There's no real, battery drain there. The battery drain, you will only see when things are constantly connected and constantly updating, to some to some network.
 
Got it. And then sorry. Last question on the basics because, like, I find it really interesting always, to talk about this. So if I have one of those old magnetic key door locks installed, and then I wanna move into a modern door lock, Can I just buy them online and just install them myself? Or would I have to do that through a vendor because of the the fire safety of the door?
 
You'll definitely need to buy them from one of the vendors and have them spec it out, you know, different door thickness.
 
The the backset. There's certain there's a lot of differences there. Some of the vendors do let hotels self install. So, you know, the maintenance guy can go around and and do that part themselves.
 
But generally, a lot of hotels, they just choose to outsource it to the lock company and say, hey. Supply and install, please. We don't wanna worry about it.
 
Got it. So so don't go on Alibaba and start buying random locks and then just installing them yourself because it impacts your fire safety.
 
Yeah. Absolutely not. Do not do it. You'll get in trouble.
 
So so ending up this block. So I know that you've, a couple of years ago, you installed a chip inside your hand.
 
Like, tell me the story because it's actually a really interesting story, but it has to do with door locks.
 
It it it does. So, the first, apartment that I moved into and and renovated, I, yeah, just kept losing my key. So after three events when I had locks locksmiths out, you know, charging two to three hundred dollars, I just thought, oh, there must be a better way. And, you know, I could have done that PIN code or something like that, but I like to go to the extremes. So, I bought an RFID chip, the ones that usually you will put into your dog or cat. Bought one of those online, injected into my hands. Did you say cats?
 
Yeah. Yeah. Microchip that you put into a dog.
 
Oh, they're RFID. I didn't realize for it.
 
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So when, you know, your animal goes missing, then the cat can scan them and they say, oh, it belongs to Adam.
 
Yeah. So I had this chip in my hands. And, yeah, now whenever I get home, I just tap my hand on the on the door and it registers the chip and opens.
 
I I injected that in twenty fourteen, so it's been in there for, what, twenty ten years now. So it's had a really good run.
 
And it's annoying because there's so much so many better ones now. There's actually ones which light up when you tap under your skin and you can see light. So I'm a bit outdated, unfortunately.
 
So so if you check-in on, like, a kiosk and you get access to a hotel encoder, could you use it? Would that work?
 
I do try every time I go, but it's only ever worked at one hotel, just due to the encoding and things that they used.
 
But no. Not often.
 
Okay.
 
Right.
 
So let's move on to the second block. And here, I wanted to just talk about what the marketplace looked like because there are so many vendors. And it you know, because this is such a long term investments that hotels are doing, I think you wanna really do your due diligence and and and and and make the right decision. We're not here to say this is our favorite because, obviously, we're in the middle of it, and we just wanna work with everyone. But we can see from the data that some vendors are just bigger globally or locally.
 
What have you seen in our marketplace in terms of statistics?

Chapter
Key players in the market
 
Yeah.
 
So there's a few names. So a few major players. So if you look at people like ASSA ABLOY who came out of the Nordics, Northern Europe is their territory. Most hotels are using Assa Abloy there. And then you see them, you know, spread around Europe and and and Australia as well.
 
In the Benelux, a player that we see all the time is Hotek, very, very huge player there. Great support in in region. Dormakaba in the US and Canada, Ontity Salto, Spain, France, Australia with Salto and, Onity there. But the key thing here is, you know, you want to pick a provider that is in the region with you and has great support. And if something goes wrong, they can come on sign and fix it because if you can't let people into a room, then you have to take that out of order. So we generally see that it the data correlates to where people have good offices and and a good, company setup.
 
Nice. And and recently, some of those vendors have now built a cloud solution because, like, the the pain we talked about about installing something on premise, we're really happy to see them building cloud solutions. Like, what's been the biggest innovation around the cloud that that they've brought?
 
Yeah. Speed, definitely. So that, you know, that encoding the, encoding the key is just going cloud to cloud and it's, you know, almost instantaneous.
 
So Speed meaning because when I pop the key at the reception or where it's suspended?
 
Yeah. Speed, cut or on the kiosk as well. Because instead of having to go, you know, you pressing the button, cloud down to a server somewhere on premise, then speaking to the lock server on premise and then back up, it's just going cloud to cloud, and then they're handling it directly to the encoders.
 
So speed key the the encoding speed is much, much faster.
 
That reliability, you know, not having any issues with that server, the Windows updates and things and and, you know, going down like what we spoke about before.
 
And then lastly is they're rolling out updates a lot faster. So now, you know, they're actually working as a SaaS company would and constantly doing great improvements.
 
Whereas before, you know, you would have to, probably usually pay a license fee and then update the local software. So, that's why we're starting to see the wallets the the wallet key starting to roll out a lot faster now.
 
So if I have RFID locks installed at my hotel, but I'm still having the software sitting on premise and I wanna move into the cloud, Do I have to upgrade all of the locks as well, or is it just the software that gets installed, on the cloud server?
 
Once again, varies vendor to vendor. But, generally, what we see is with the the RFID locks that are only a few years old, they are just going to be they reprogram them, and then they work with the newer software.
 
Nice.
 
So, yes, the So you don't have to buy another piece of hardware to enable this?
 
Yeah. Correct. The encoders will change. So you'll get new encoders. But no, they just reprogram the locks generally.
 
Nice. So let's talk briefly about digital keys because there's obviously in the marketplace, we see a lot of solutions out there, and they're all different kind of solutions. But what have you seen in our marketplace that are some of the really interesting solutions that excite you?
 
Yeah. Definitely. The the ones who do really well are the people that, that look after that whole journey. So they're not just a lock provider with an app. It's people that are offering the whole check-in flow, which then goes into a digital key flow, messaging as well.
 
So it it's people that really integrated into that journey rather than just saying, you ticked the box. You now have digital keys. Let's hope people use it.
 
Yeah. Because it's disjointed. Right? Because you've got to somehow get access to the guests, figure out a way to communicate with them, to send them the key for them to check-in online, to provide all So it's a it's a really disjointed journey if you're doing that with a vendor that sits in between. So it's it's like often the vendors that do both a CRM and a door lock are the ones that can get this right. Whereas if it's just a door lock provider, then it often feels a bit patchy.
 
Yeah. I mean, you you'll it's it's very obvious because you have to do you know, when it's disjointed, you have to do multiple logins. You have to receive different verification codes.
 
It's that's my number one, pet peeve when it comes to digital lock solutions. It should just be easy. I should be able to get it on my phone and not have to worry about all these things.
 
Does every vendor, like, every major vendor that you called out earlier have their own digital key as well? Or is it really some that they're doing something interesting?
 
All the major vendors, will have a digital key solution, and they do they do it in two ways. One is you can choose to use their solution off off the shelf. So, they'll have their own app branded with with their name on it, or they'll offer, an SDK. So then people like us can integrate that into outflows and and other door lock, providers or even a hotel owned branded app. They can embed it in there. What is an SDK?
 
Software developer kit. So they have how it works, and then, their software, and then we will take it and put it inside of inside of our app so we don't have to, worry about any of, like, the low level communication.

Chapter
Implementing Apple key
 
So so one of the things that's really interesting is Apple, Key. It's come out a couple of years ago. I remember the announcement, and it really got a lot of buzz. However, it's it's taken a few years, and I haven't really seen it live in a hotel yet. What do you think is taking them so long to get that out into hotels?
 
That there's multiple parties involved. So, Apple has to work with the door lock provider. Door lock provider needs to make sure they work with whoever's distributing it. So so, you know, we're we're a partner in that in that whole ecosystem.
 
Also the hotels, you know, most of them have this old hardware and on prem hardware. On prem, you know, we know there's security issues with. So most likely, there will be some rules about you must be in the cloud to have wallet based keys.
 
So there's multiple pieces that need to all come together at once.
 
But I do see some traction happening on this. Like, at HITEC this year, we saw, had all of the lock vendor stands, them showing it, them doing demos.
 
So hopefully, it it gets rolled out really quickly.
 
I'm really excited for it because it's the technology just works. It's you, you know, you don't even need to unlock your phone. You just tap your phone against the lock just like a key card, and it opens what you're used to with, all of the, public transport express mode settings that you have.
 
If your phone runs out of battery, you know, you can still use Apple Pay, if your phone runs out of battery.
 
So it's nice. It just works.
 
Nice. So if you compare that so in the in the marketplace, we've got a number of digital key vendors, and they all have different workflows. So some of them are you get an email with a URL that you click on to open the door, but it means you have to go into your inbox constantly to find that email to open the door. Some of them have native apps. What makes Apple different from those kind of, solutions? Why is it smoother?
 
Yeah. So how their flow works is, you know, in your email or your, you know, text message that you get sent out from the hotel, there'll be an add to Apple Wallet button. You click that. And as soon as you click that, you have your key in your phone. It's just not activated yet.
 
And in that, when it's sitting in your phone, you can actually push people to do your online checking flow and all of the verification that you need.
 
And then the moment your reservation is checked in, that key becomes active.
 
You have it sitting on your phone already. So, that's why it's really nice.
 
So it would you can send a push notification to the phone saying, hey, room two zero two, your key is now ready even if it's earlier than the three o'clock check-in time in hotels?
 
Yep. Exactly. The moment that reservation is checked in inside of the PMS, that's the trigger to say, hey.
 
Just make the key activate active now. Nice. I can't, like I I honestly can't wait for this to happen because I find it with airlines to be so smooth where you just check-in, I download the digital key, I don't have to print anything, I just walk into the airport, and it just is incredibly smooth, especially if you're a business traveler. You just wanna get into that hotel as fast and as, as efficient as possible.
 
So the promise has been really exciting, and I can't wait for this to find real widespread adoption. I just saw that this weekend, Apple Pay is now ten years out there, and it's changed my life. I I leave the house without an actual wallet with money in it nowadays, and I just use Apple Pay everywhere. But it's taken such a long time, if you think about it, to get that widespread adoption.
 
Absolutely. And, of course, you know, we, we're both Apple users. So we say Apple, you know, Apple Pay all the time, but Google Pay is also working Yeah.
 
But maybe work with them.
 
Google Wallet Hotel Keys are are coming out there too for all the Android users. But the, but still, you know, that is the the way you're unlocking the door and how you're doing that. But the most important bit is those sets of rules that the hotel has to configure. When are they comfortable letting a guest go straight into their room?
 
So it might be, you know, only allow someone if there's a, a picture or a passport verification done or pre authorization.
 
For shared accommodation, you may say it's only if someone has, stayed here before that we're happy to, give them a digital key. So, there's it's still very important that the hotel sets up those rules and and draws out their workflow when they want people to have their digital key triggered.
 
Got it. So I guess that rounds off this, like, second block, which is really about looking at the marketplace and what's out there. And I want to

Chapter
Introduction to ҹɫֱ²¥ digital key
 
shift towards the third section of this conversation, which is the Muse digital key. So we've obviously been around for twelve years, and and we've got all the integrations. So, why did we feel that we needed to solve the solution with the digital key?
 
Because look. The PMS and, therefore, ҹɫֱ²¥, you know, we're the source of truth, determining who has access or not. And it's not just about that main guest having access. It's also about their travel companions.
 
We handle the room moves, the date changes. Everything that triggers that that key digital key life cycle, we're in control of.
 
And also, as I said earlier, that the most important bit is around those rules about when we should grant access, and who should have access, and who should have access. Scared accommodation is a very, very, you know, important piece here.
 
When people are booking single gender dorms, for example, you probably want to have some verification done, before issuing that digital key.
 
And secondly as well, we have the ҹɫֱ²¥ ecosystem. We have our guest portal online check-in, which ends in that digital key flow. For people that don't do that, they check-in on the kiosk. On the kiosk, it now tells you would you like a physical key or a digital key.
 
And then lastly, for the people that still go to the desk, they get that text message wel or email welcoming welcoming them to the hotel. And in that, it says, hey. If you wanna use a digital key, click this button and you'll get it.
 
Yeah. So so if you think about ҹɫֱ²¥Lab, we we went into the PMS space because we wanted to control the guest experience. And that's really why we thought we're not the central reservation system. We're not the door lock.
 
We're we need to be the system that all the employees that are assisting guests are interacting with. But because we're in the cloud, we built this whole online check-in, because we're like, well, we're in the cloud. So if employees update these profiles, why don't we allow guests to update them, like, with an airline? And we've seen basically, every hotel that runs on ҹɫֱ²¥ has a complimentary online check-in built in because it's just a native part of the system.
 
We see one in eight guests checking themselves in online and that's the average. But you see hotels that have really leaned into the technology that are getting those numbers up to close to one hundred percent. You've got some really innovative brands that have got really good at communicating with their guests and making sure that every one of them checks in online.
 
And we've got solutions like so we do emails, and we'll email at the time of booking and then two days before arrival. But you can also, add an SMS package that if if we still don't see people have checked in that we SMS them, you know, twenty four hours before arrival. So we've got real great ways to get them into the user flow, and it tackles a lot of operational challenges.
 
But it's because the most native solution, it feels like the the experience I had on the booking engine on the website is the same as you're getting with the online check-in. It's the same as the kiosk. And therefore, we don't lose guests along the way of this digital journey because it's a very native journey.
 
And that's where we felt, okay, we've we've got to cross that last really painful thing, which is getting a bless the key in the hand of a customer is is hard. And that's why, you know, we have the kiosk as a last mile solution. If you didn't do the online check-in, you can still walk up to a tablet and pick up your key.
 
But the majority of guests, we should be able to serve them on their own smart devices and get those digital keys deployed on those devices.
 
Exactly. And and the key thing you said that, kiosk is the last mile. Right? We, you know, we want people to be doing this on their own own device and going straight to the room, without having to stop in the lobby.
 
But, yeah, kiosk is for people that, don't respond to the emails and don't get don't respond to that very, important text message.
 
So so which vendors have we currently integrated with and which ones are on the immediate road map?
 
Yeah. So for Digital Keys, we are currently working with Assa Aboy, so their Vostio cloud solution, Visionline, which is their on prem solution.
 
We are working on adding, Salto, dormakaba, and Onity, to to the mix. But as you said earlier, we are happy to work with anyone. We have an open API so people can always build to us and connect.
 
And, yeah, we we want as many hotels to have digital keys as possible.
 
So what you're saying is that they can integrate with us for our digital key solution. So if you're a door vendor, you they could actually build towards our digital key?
 
Yeah. Absolutely.
 
And they would be listening to the triggers when we're saying, hey. Check this in now, pushing the key in into us for us to distribute.
 
Yeah. Any any vendors listening to this, please just reach out to me, and we can talk about how we can do it.
 
But I'm speaking to a lot already, so those watching probably already know about it.
 
So but, like, I think that the thing that's important is that people, to enable the ҹɫֱ²¥ digital key, they don't have to upgrade their hardware. If they have one of the the vendors that we already work with and the the software that you just mentioned, like Vostio or Visi Online, they could just use the ҹɫֱ²¥ Digital Key in addition to that. So there is no hardware requirement beyond, what they already have. Right?
 
Yeah. Absolutely. And what our customer success team, can do is, like, they can they can do some checks, and they can also speak to the local door lock provider rep that that is in the area. You know, we have the contacts there.
 
So we can check and say, are you ready? This is what you need to do, and we can walk you through that path.
 
Got it. So, what makes the ҹɫֱ²¥ digital key different in your opinion versus some of the other digital key solutions out there?
 
Yeah. The main thing for me is how we built it and embedded it into the ecosystem, that you go through your online check-in, which, you know, you you get into via that email and text message. You go through that. You're you're paying earlier.
 
You're doing your room upgrade. Everything that you're interacting with through that flow. And then at the very end, you're clicking get digital key, and it opens an app clip on your phone. And it and it's and and it's there.
 
You don't need to log in again. You don't need to type in some verification code because it's a different software.
 
It just is part of that flow, and it's very, very natural.
 
I said earlier, the kiosk, which, you know, traditionally is just, oh, I want my digital key, but we don't think about, my physical key, but we don't think about that way. We think about the kiosk as being that extension for that online check-in flow, and it's for people that, missed out on doing it on their own device. So it will ask you, hey. Would you like to use digital key or a physical one? Just scan this QR code.
 
So, yeah, it's it's how we've built it into the ecosystem that it's it's very natural, and that's why we're seeing really good music numbers.
 
Yeah. And we often talk about, Airports with the iPhone, and these are not the best headphones on the market.
 
But it's just the way that they interact with it, the way that it switches to my phone or to my computer as a call starts on my computer. It's just because it's native part of that ecosystem, it makes it better. And I thought this is such a core piece to our story, like making sure that people have seen these experiences. And the key is often a big breaking point to being able to completely serve guests on their own smartphone.
 
And it felt like a natural part that we had to solve for in our ecosystem.

Chapter
The role of PMS in managing keys
 
So could this a question we often get is like, oh, I love the online check-in. I love the little key, but I'm afraid to change my PMS because we've been with that vendor for twenty years. And do I really need to change the PMS in order to enable some of these these really great features that you have?
 
Yes. You do. Look, because the PMS is the foundation. And without that modern PMS, you know, you're you're not ready for online check-in and digital keys and kiosks and everything like that.
 
There's been, you know, so many hotels I've stayed at, and I've used a lot of, different digital key experiences. And you can tell, like, it's clunky and it's not working because you have to refresh it multiple times for it to pull the data down because it's not pushing it, you know, in real time. Or when, you know, my digital key got disabled because my partner went to front desk, and said, hey. I left my phone in the room.
 
Could you give me a physical key?
 
And it's clear that, you know and that's because the foundations aren't there. There's not a modern PMS that has this, these companions and the customer, customer linkings and things like that. So, yes, you need to change your PMS to get all the great guests facing technology.

Chapter
Key takeaways
 
And and, you know, I I've grown up, in hotels with legacy systems, and it was very painful back in the day to change your PMS. But it isn't that hard anymore. We deploy hundreds of hotels every single month. We got really good at this.
 
So it definitely isn't that painful, but you just cannot innovate on that old legacy tech stack that doesn't talk to the cloud. So you definitely have to add that piece in to to enable this. And if you do think about digital keys, don't forget about, you know, the room. You know, when you walk into the room, the first thing you have to do is put your plastic key into that door thing to enable the lights.
 
You do need to think about that with your door vendor and how you're gonna solve this because suddenly, I I don't have a plastic key anymore. I've got it on my phone. And I often see this disjointed where I've done downloaded the digital key, and then I get to my room. I'm like, how am I supposed to switch the lights on?
 
And I put my credit card in the door.
 
But, you know, I don't wanna forget my credit card as I walk out. So that's a really last kind of piece that I think everyone should think about.
 
Absolutely.
 
Yeah. But as you said, you know, the the DoorDash partner, they have gone through this before. They have all the hardware. They'll be able to find a solution for you.
 
Yeah. For sure. Adam, I couldn't have done this one without you. Normally, I feel very confident just talking about these topics on my own, but this one definitely needed a specialist.
 
Thank you for, staying up late for me. I I woke up early for you because Adam's in Sydney. But I really appreciate your inputs. Thank you.
 
Thanks so much. See you next time.