As both a tech geek and a travel geek, I think this story about keyless hotel rooms is really interesting.  Starwood Hotels (Westin, Sheraton, Aloft, W, etc.) is launching a pilot program at 2 hotels – the Aloft Hotel in Manhattan (Harlem) and the Aloft Hotel in Cupertino, CA – allowing guests to check in and unlock the door to their room using an app on their phone.

They’ve put together a clever video to market the new technology:

The full story is on Apple Insider:

Starwood CEO Frits van Paasschen told the publication that the company believes the new smartphone-enabled self-service technology will be an important selling point for hotels in the future. “We believe this will become the new standard for how people will want to enter a hotel,” he said, adding that “It may be a novelty at first, but we think it will become table stakes for managing a hotel.” After the two-property pilot, Starwood hopes to have the system active across each of the hotels in its W Hotel and Aloft portfolios by the end of 2014

Although it sounds a bit scary at first, it seems to have the potential for being extremely convenient, especially for business travelers who are constantly checking in and out of hotel rooms.  It’ll be very interesting to see how the pilot program works, and I would expect to eventually see this trend catching on.

What do you all think about this?  Would you want to use this at your next hotel stay?