Vivakey: digital hotels

Abstract

The present proposal aims at inserting the technology developed during the execution of the project (AIRKEY - CONTROL OF SOCIAL ACCESS USING MOBILE DEVICES, 2015) in the hotel and hospitality market, adding innovative features and services to the system, in such a way to deliver determinant differentials in the marketing of the technology in question. The product derived from this research and development project will be a hotel management system that reduces the hotel's operating costs to up to one-third of the current costs in order to provide a fully digital experience to guests. In this sense, it can be understood that the macro objective of this work will be to apply the technology already developed by the company to implement a digital hotel, operated by connected devices, artificial intelligence and BigData. There are now more devices connected to the Internet than people, and this portrays a prospective scenario where more and more "things" will be generating information and using the network to communicate and take direct and decisive action in the physical world. The technology developed in partnership with FAPESP allows devices connected to the doors to recognize people safely and make decisions about opening doors with prior authorizations. This research project will develop additional software to this people identification and access management in order to improve the experience of using a hotel and decrease costs for the hotel. The challenge at this point is to design and to develop a cloud-based housing management, cleaning and rooms maintenance, known commercially as PMS, integrated with the Magikey platform and with a Mobile application that allows guests to have a digital experience from the reservation to the entrance in hotel rooms. We also have the challenge of simplifying and reducing our hardware in order to facilitate installation and maintenance, besides allowing a business model based on lending. This new system allows that reservation digital transactions, payment, checkin and checkout be integrated directly into smart locks connected to the internet. In other words, once a guest makes the reservation, payment and checkin, the access is granted automatically for the period of time determined. The goal is to have a simple and fast solution that automates booking, payment and user access, which provides user convenience and cost savings for hotel owners (in addition to reducing operating errors). Besides that,, the use of Magikey technology, guarantees security, scalability and robustness with regard to intermittent Internet in this process of automation. Hotel owners can thus leave the complexity of booking, payment and access control management to a simple and intuitive system. The goal is to simplify fragmented processes and provide a safe, easy and cost effective solution. Two technical challenges are part of the proposed final solution. The first of them is to develop an all-in-one and plug-and-play solution that is capable of automating the hotel operation, from room reservation to guest checkout, allowing for a low operating cost, low human error, great usability, great intelligence and embedded security, and a totally new experience that meets modern society and the trend of collaborative consumption. The other relates to making the hardware structure (the current controller and reader) a single-device framework that communicates directly with the cloud and makes all the decisions locally, securely and reliably. (AU)