“The Opus hotel in Vancouver made a somewhat shocking announcement last week. The hotel was ripping the landline phones out of its rooms and replacing them with iPhones,” Ryan Faas reports for Cult of Mac. “While that seems extravagant, it’s actually a rather brilliant plan.”
“The hotel, which already offers guests an iPad that can act as a concierge service, points out that offering guests, particularly international guests, an iPhone adds a lot of value,” Faas reports. “In addition to the value for customers, Apple’s free iOS management tools could make implementing such a program simple and relatively inexpensive – beyond the cost of the iPhones themselves anyway.”
Faas reports, “Offering an iPhone to each guest means that he or she can make calls while in the room, in the hotel, or anywhere they happen to go – that means guests who aren’t from Canada don’t need to worry about international roaming charges. It also means that they have quick and easy access to hotel services, which will be programmed into the phone along with a range of apps for entertainment and finding their way around Vancouver and surrounding areas. When a guest checks out, the iPhone is wiped.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Dan K.” for the heads up.]
neat idea.
It should also function as the room key. Brilliant!
Nice. I can shoot my hotel porn on it and photostream it to my Mac.
You’re just a left nut. You have nothing to offer 😛
Leave it to BLN to think of porn.
But can you really call it porn if you’re alone in the room? Who would want to watch? 😉
So guests get to basically keep an iPhone for as long as they stay and use it as they please? I like the idea of this.
Cool !
I don’t get it: someone steals my iPhone- can’t they just go on a wild shopping spree? And since I don’t have my phone, how can I call someone to tell them it’s stolen? Doesn’t this seem unduly dangerous to any of you?
of course you don’t get it. If someone takes your wallet, they would never think of spending your money all over town. Gee, you wouldn’t even have money to use a pay phone to report it to the police.
Are you serious? You use iCloud to remotely wipe your iPhone and track the perp with Find My iPhone. Plus, you’re protected under U.S. federal law to a maximum of $50 if someone uses your card without your authorization, and most companies won’t even charge that to you.
Not only that, you can put a passcode on your phone, and the apps for payment are password protected. That’s another reason I think the app payment plan is better than NFC.
Who’s there service provider again??? I’d like to make a call in my room.
I hate it that you can’t edit posts!
Who’s their service provider again??? I’d like to make a call in my room.
Agree with your complaint about not being able to edit. That occasional fat finger or brain freeze when typing happens to all of us at one time or another. It just means we’re all human.
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What if someone steals your hotel room?
I wonder what security measures are in place for theft by guests? If people steal towels won’t’ they want to steal phones?
You get charged for ‘lost’ bathrobes, so you will presumably get charged for lost iPhones in the same manner.
They will probably phrase it more delicately – “If guests find that they like the iPhone and can’t bear to give it back, they may simply keep it and we will automatically add a charge of $500 to their account.”