European hotel guests get room keys on mobile phones thanks to NFC
After a long flight, you arrive extremely tired at your hotel to find a line of people queued up at the front desk. Then you remember that you are an NFC user … you bypass the front desk and go straight to your room because you already know your room number and the key … in your cell phone.
This is already a reality – at least in pilot-form – in select European hotels and it's going to be introduced to American audiences soon. The solution is one more exciting capability of Near Field Communications (NFC) ... in this iteration an NFC-enabled phone communicates with contactless door locks that are NFC-compatible.
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Few British landmarks are as widely loved as London's St Pancras station. Will the new Eurostar terminal complement its Gothic extravagance - or clash horribly with it? A month before the terminal's official opening, Jonathan Glancey gets an exclusive sneak preview
Green initiatives are good for the planet and good for business
(04 October 2007 00:00)Changing people's behaviour and attitudes towards climate change isn't something that can be done overnight. Since July, when Defra launched its Act on CO2 campaign, we have been encouraging people to think about the amount of carbon they produce and what they can do to reduce it - from fitting energy-efficient light bulbs, to boiling only as much water as they need for a cup of tea.
Although the focus of the campaign has been on the actions people can take in their own homes, there is a lot that the hotel industry can do to help guests behave in a less wasteful way, too.
Every day, hundreds of almost-clean towels get left on the floor to be washed when they don't need to be.Taps are left dripping, food is readily discarded and lights and air-conditioning are left on for convenience. So what can the hotel industry do to encourage their guests to be less wasteful?
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