The travel search service Kayak has unveiled a new feature that allows guests at independent hotels to choose their room, check in or order a meal just by using the company’s app.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Kayak will launch this system next month at its new property in Miami Beach, but hopes to soon expand it to other hotels around the country. The feature will allow small, independent hoteliers — which may not have the resources to offer this sort of system on their own — to compete with bigger chains such as Hilton, which have offered check-in and room service apps for years.
“Millions of consumers already have the Kayak app on their phones,” Kayak Chief Executive Steve Hafner told the Journal. “We see a big opportunity to apply our audience and technology to the accommodation space.”
The Journal notes that this is yet another example of how lodging brands and online travel agents have begun to creep into each other’s territory, with Airbnb listing hotels on its site and Marriott offering short-term rentals. But it is also a sign of how the hospitality and travel industry has had to adapt in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Guests are searching for services that allow them to interact with their hotels digitally, whether it’s something like the Kayak app or Best Western experimenting with biometric verification tools such as speech recognition and mobile-based keyless entry.
And while the travel industry has a positive long-term outlook after COVID, things look somewhat less promising in the short term. Only about 12 percent of Americans say they plan to take a spring break trip this year, the U.S. Travel Association said last week. That’s down from 16 percent from an earlier survey conducted at the end of February.
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