The "Room Card Revolution" in Hotels
In 2022, Hilton Group exclusively collaborated with the Dunhuang Museum. Taking the renowned national trend cultural IP "Dunhuang" as the theme, it launched a personalized limited-time customized electronic room card on the Hilton Honors app. The first batch of this electronic room card has been rolled out in 95 hotels. The unique customized electronic room card has brought a new trend in room cards to the industry.
Hilton Launches the "Dunhuang Room Card"
Hilton Group's brand-new corporate marketing platform, "Hilton. For the Stay", was launched globally. The series of co-branded electronic room cards presented this time aims to boost the series of marketing activities in China, namely "When You Stay Right, Everything Is Right". It also emphasizes the concept of paying attention to the staying experience during the journey, aiming to make guests' staying experience smoother and more enjoyable.
The customized Dunhuang-themed electronic room card released this time is crafted with great care. The room card tells a series of stories of "Stunning Dunhuang" with the iconic Dunhuang element of the "Flying Apsaras". The flying apsaras are the symbol of Dunhuang art, exquisitely crafted and unparalleled in the world. The Nine-colored Deer was not recorded in historical books throughout the long history of China until its true appearance gradually emerged in the late Qing Dynasty. The beautiful Nine-colored Deer stood alone in the vast Gobi Desert for thousands of years, finally leaving a precious page in the history of art for people today. And the work "Stunning Dunhuang · Flying Apsaras and the Magic Deer" on the newly launched electronic room card is a combination of the Nine-colored Deer and the flying apsaras. It describes the scene of floating beyond the Ninth Heaven and looking down at the celestial palaces. The figure is as slender and graceful as a young girl, extremely beautiful, with fluttering clothes and swirling dance ribbons.
In addition, more Dunhuang element-themed electronic room cards will be successively launched. All of them carry auspicious and joyful meanings and represent the essence of Dunhuang culture, enabling guests to leave unforgettable travel memories during their stay at Hilton.
It is known that this is not Hilton's first attempt at electronic room cards. As early as 2015, the group initiated the application of electronic room cards. Now, the electronic room card function has been launched in more than a thousand hotels globally, and 95 hotels in the Greater China region have put it into use. Moreover, newly opened hotels currently are all equipped with this function.
The History of Hotel Room Cards
For early hotels, the key was not only an important medium for guests to intuitively perceive whether the hotel was high-end. What made traditional and distinctive hotels different in terms of keys was the keychain. Usually, just by getting a key, you could feel the style of the hotel. At the same time, the hotel key was also an important decoration placed at the hotel front desk, directly reflecting the hotel's room inventory and occupancy situation.
In many old hotels with a long heritage, we can still see the presence of hotel keys. For example, the Ritz London, which opened in 1906, has an "R" shaped keychain on its key, symbolizing the Ritz Hotel. The HILLTOP Hotel in Japan, which opened in 1954, has a simple and solid copper door key.However, traditional door keys are not only bulky but also prone to being lost. Nowadays, except for traditional old hotels, mostly only some hotels with their own unique styles still use them, such as the MGallery by Sofitel and Amanfayun.
With the development of technology, the "room card" that we are familiar with today, as a brilliant invention in the hotel industry, has become prevalent in the industry. The small card is easy to carry. Even if it is accidentally lost, it spares guests the embarrassment of compensation. It also allows hotels to fully utilize this small item to showcase their features.
It is impossible to determine which hotel was the first to apply room cards. But when tracing the evolution history of hotel room cards, it has gone through three stages: magnetic cards, contact IC cards, and radio frequency cards. Magnetic cards were the first smart cards used for hotel locks. Even now, some small hotels are still using them, but they are on the verge of being phased out. In addition, IC cards that can read and write electronic information are no longer the mainstream of hotel room cards. Nowadays, radio frequency cards, which feature high system stability, long service life, and convenient use, have overcome the disadvantages of contact IC cards, such as being vulnerable to water, dust, and easy to damage. They are widely applied in hotel intelligent door lock systems.
At present, with the rise of intelligence, hotels are no longer satisfied with physical room cards alone. Operators are integrating room cards with mobile phones to make the use of various facilities in the hotel more convenient.
The "Revolutionary Path" of Hotel Room Cards
It can be said that the changes in hotel room cards represent a "revolutionary path" for hotels to continuously evolve and adapt to the new era. Along this path, we can observe a series of changes that come with the times.
Firstly, from physical to virtual. From the keys and room cards in the past to the electronic room cards bound to mobile phones nowadays, in this transformation from physical to virtual, consumers' habits are gradually being changed.
Guests who have stayed in hotels must be familiar with such a scenario: After registering information at the front desk, they receive a room card and then use it to open their guest room door. However, more and more hotels have reached a consensus that the magnetic card access control system is outdated, and RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology is the trend. Many hotels have already taken the lead in this regard.
As early as 2014, the Aloft Harlem in New York and the Aloft Cupertino in California, which were under the Starwood Hotels & Resorts Group (not yet acquired by Marriott at that time), began to trial virtual room keys. Guests needed to download the Starwood app first. After completing the check-in procedures on their mobile phones, they would receive a message containing the virtual key. When guests arrived at the hotel, they didn't need to check in at the front desk anymore and could go directly to their guest rooms. They could open or close the door by taking out their mobile phones and tapping or shaking them, which was very convenient and quick.
Hilton Hotels & Resorts officially launched the Digital Key in 2015. It enables HHonors loyalty program members to not only check in at the front desk but also open the room door with their smartphones. Marriott International also introduced the "Mobile Room Key" in 2018, allowing guests to enjoy the experience of controlling their arrival and staying time on their own.
With the continuous application of mobile technology and the popularization of intelligence in the hotel field, the transformation of hotel room cards from physical to virtual is an irreversible trend.
Secondly, from ordinary to customized. For a long time in the past, hotel room cards mainly served a functional purpose, and not much effort was put into their design. However, with the continuous development and differentiation of hotels, more and more hotels are beginning to customize room cards in a branded, localized, and cultural way, making room cards a unique "name card" of the hotel and arousing guests' desire to collect them.
In the eyes of many hotel enthusiasts, collecting room cards has become a unique ritual. And hotels are also happy to use customized room cards with exclusive design concepts as souvenirs of the journey.
For example, the room card of the Rosewood Beijing is different from the common rectangular shape of hotel room cards. It is smaller and closer to a square, a rare style. When held in the hand, it has a high-quality leather texture. And on these square cards, there are different patterns. These patterns were specially photographed by the hotel's invited photographers of the Seventeen-Arch Bridge in the Summer Palace in Beijing, a corner of Houhai, the Forbidden City, and the Temple of Heaven. With different filters, they bring unexpected surprises to the journey.
After the idea of using an Apple Watch to open the hotel room door was put on the agenda, the W Hotel customized a set of rather humorous room cards in a very trendy way. They used yellow, red, and blue colors to graffiti the words "My mission is coming to an end" on a black background, full of black humor, which is enough to attract the young generation with a rebellious spirit.
Thirdly, from single-function to interconnected. In the transformation of hotel room cards from single-function to interconnected, there are two distinct aspects of change. One is the change in the function of room cards. In the past, the function of hotel room cards was single, only used to open the guest room door and then insert the card to get electricity. But now, hotel room cards have a much wider range of applications and are almost like an "all-purpose card" in the hotel. Guests can use the room card to access public spaces such as the hotel gym and bar, and they can also charge their expenses to the room card. A small room card connects the entire hotel space.
Another change is that hotel room cards are no longer solely from the hotel brand itself, and more and more co-branding attempts on room cards have emerged. The customized Dunhuang-themed electronic room card launched by Hilton Hotels & Resorts mentioned at the beginning of this article is a cross-border co-branding between the hotel and the Dunhuang Museum, which is also an attempt from single-function to interconnected. This can be regarded as a pioneering move in the hotel industry.
How Will Hotel Room Cards Evolve in the Future?
After several transformations, from keys to room cards and then to electronic room cards, for hotels full of infinite imagination, a small room card also has a promising future. Let's make some speculations.
Firstly, the sense of culture. When room cards first appeared in the form of keys, they represented the cultural sense of the hotel. The small keys might not have much difference, but the keychains hanging on the keys contained the "thoughtfulness" of the hotel. For example, on the key of the Banyan Tree Ringha in Shangri-La, there is a unique Tibetan prayer wheel of the Vajra, indicating that the hotel is located in a paradise-like resort at the junction of Yunnan and Tibet, integrating the Banyan Tree culture with the local environment.
On the key of the Relais & Châteaux Lakeside Village Hangzhou, there is a small bronze plate. On one side is the logo of Relais & Châteaux, and on the other side are the words "Lakeside Village" and the room number. The brand and the cultural sense of the hotel are shown with this small plate.
In the past two years, hotels have also been striving to achieve a breakthrough in the sense of culture for card room cards. As one of the representatives of the comprehensive upgrade of the Hualuxe Hotels & Resorts brand, the brand invited the new ink artist Chen Jiu to design hotel room cards and other guest supplies inspired by classic opera performance scenes such as "The Legend of the White Snake" and "Prosperity of Dragon and Phoenix". The abstract expressionism of new ink painting gives the hotel room cards a different and vivid presentation.
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