Open your hotel room with your mobile phone

David Heath
Wednesday, 23 December 2009 04:43

Your IT - Home IT

Allowing the guest to do all the work is great news for the hotel, but is it good for the guest?

New technology from OpenWays simplifies the process of booking in and checking in to a hotel.

A prospective guest can make a booking over the internet and as part of the process have their room number and an access code sent to their mobile phone.

Upon arrival, the guest will bypass the registration desk and proceed directly to their room.  Their mobile phone will emit a "Crypto Acoustic Credential," in other words some kind of secured tone sequence that will be detected by the door, which then opens.

There is no other key.

OpenWays claims that their technology will work on any of the estimated 4 billion phones worldwide (although I'm sure I could dig up an old Motorola 5200 that they'd struggle with!)

On their website, OpenWays claims it "integrates seamlessly with all major lock technologies including: Mag-stripe, Smart Card, RFID/PROX" presumably with a modification to be able to 'listen' to the tones.  In addition, they claim "No keys, no greenhouse gasses: reduce your carbon footprint ando [sic] go GREEN."

Excuse me!  What carbon footprint?  It always has to be couched in 'green' language these days doesn't it!  The reduction is one (generally reusable) plastic card.  Big deal!

I accept that every traveler in the target audience will have a mobile phone, what I don't accept is the expectation that they will always have it with them.  What if they go to the gym or the pool?  Will they take their phone?  Possibly not.

Also, what of the attack and failure modes? 

For instance, guest accidentally leaves his phone at the office, loses it etc; or dunks it in the hotel pool!

How secure is the tone sequence?  Is it recordable / replayable or is it encrypted in some cyclic fashion (like a RSA keyfob)?  Will it work with the centrally managed phones that many corporations like to distribute to employees?

An interesting technology, but it doesn't look complete and robust just yet.