We built mobile check-in and Bluetooth room keys for a global resort group, synced with each property's PMS so guests can skip the front desk. Wait times fell 65%, and 42% of staff were re-allocated to other work.
Industry: HospitalityService: Web & MobileUpdated
Overview
The challenge
Arrival relied on staff scanning passports by hand and encoding physical keycards. At peak changeover times this caused 45-minute delays, which lowered guest satisfaction scores and raised front-of-house labour costs.
The keycards were a cost of their own, and the old locks kept no live record of who entered which room.
Seasonal peaks filled lobbies with waiting guests, a poor first impression for a luxury brand.
Lost cards and encoder maintenance cost more than $180k a year across the portfolio.
Older keys had no live audit trail, so room entry times were hard to prove in liability disputes.
The solution
The resort's cloud backend and the guest's phone exchange keys securely over OAuth2-gated Bluetooth sessions.
Containerised gateways sync room availability and key status from the PMS to each door lock as changes happen.
Every door access is written to a secure, traceable log, giving staff a daily view of room readiness and guest movement patterns.
Before and after
Before
RFID keycards
Cards demagnetised easily, got lost and needed a trip to the desk to replace.
After
Mobile Bluetooth key
Room access is sent straight to the guest's own secure phone.
Before
Manual checks
Front-desk agents compared IDs with printed reservation lists.
After
Digital check-in
Biometrics and OCR passport checks are built into the mobile check-in flow.
Before
Reactive service
Staff heard about an arrival only after desk check-in was finished.
After
Arrival alerts
Geo-fencing alerts tell housekeeping and the concierge when a guest reaches the property.
Key features
We tuned the Bluetooth polling window so guests can unlock their door within 1.8 seconds of reaching it.
Business impact
1.8s response time
End-to-end encryption keeps guest location and access data anonymised in the cloud.
Business impact
100% data control and residency
One API layer works with Oracle Opera and with smaller boutique PMS platforms, without changes to either.
Business impact
Rollout across the whole portfolio
Results
65% Portfolio Wait Reduction
Mobile check-in let 40% of arrivals skip the lobby entirely, with no wait at all.
Before: 45 MinsAfter: Instant
42% Staff Capacity Lift
Guests took to the Bluetooth key quickly because it was easy to use, which freed staff for premium concierge service.
Before: LowAfter: High
1.8s Key Generation
Keys are generated and delivered to the phone before the guest reaches the lift.
Before: < 5.0sAfter: 1.8s
Faster delivery
Building on these tested components saved about 9 weeks of setup work, which we put into the resort's own check-in flow.
Our tested handshake module gave us secure key exchange between phones and door locks without writing it from scratch.
Existing PMS connectors linked Oracle Opera and the boutique systems to the new room access layer.
Ready-made hardware monitoring flagged gateways and locks that went offline or needed attention.
A tested auto-scaler added backend capacity when waves of peak arrivals came in.
Trust and control
A middleware layer sits between the app and each lock vendor's API, so future hardware upgrades won't break the app.
HARDWARE AGNOSTICSOC 2-ready workflows, with regular penetration tests on the Bluetooth handshake.
ENTERPRISE SECURITYLocal edge caching lets guests open their rooms even if the resort's internet connection goes down.
ZERO DOWNTIMEThe resort group owns 100% of the custom PMS adapters and mobile authentication logic from handover.
100% OWNEDGuests check in on their phone, verify their passport with OCR and biometrics, and receive a Bluetooth room key before they reach the lift. That removed the 45-minute peak delays caused by manual passport scans and keycard encoding. Wait times fell by 65%, and 40% of arrivals skipped the lobby entirely.
A middleware layer with one API connects to Oracle Opera and to smaller boutique PMS platforms without changing them. Containerised gateways then sync room availability and key status from the PMS to each door lock in under 2 seconds. Guests can unlock their door within 1.8 seconds of reaching it.
Guests can still open their rooms because door access is cached locally at the edge. Every access event is written to a secure, traceable log, which gives the resort a record of room entry for liability disputes. The Bluetooth handshake is encrypted with AES 256 GCM and penetration tested regularly.
If arrivals still bottleneck at reception, we can help you add mobile check-in and phone keys that work with the PMS you already run.