Hotels see hundreds of guests check in and out every day, and with this comes a mountain of personal information. That makes maintaining accurate guest registers a never-ending challenge for hotel staff.
Accurately kept guest registers are, however, a legal obligation for hotels. The exact requirements differ from country to country, which further complicates matters for international hotel chains. One thing is certain: Hotels must comply with local laws and regulations, or face fines and legal action.
Reliable ID verification protects hotels from these liability risks – and has other benefits. Accurate guest identification helps spot individuals who may pose a risk or have previously caused problems in hotels. By confirming guests’ identities, hotels not only enhance security on the premises, but can also reduce fraud risks.
In this article, we will explore how guest ID verification works and where smartphones come in to streamline the process.
The traditional check-in process
Upon arrival, guests are asked to present some form of identification document at the front desk. Depending on local regulations, this can be one of the following:
- Passport
- National ID card
- Driver’s license
- Residence permit
The clerk then visually inspects the ID document, checking the photo, name, date of birth, and other details for signs of manipulation. Then, they manually enter the guest’s information into the hotel system. This process may seem fairly straightforward, but there is room for improvement.
Manual ID verification and data entry are time-consuming and error-prone. Consequently, travel-weary hotel guests have to wait at the reception before they can go to their rooms. Staffers, meanwhile, make mistakes due to unfamiliar ID documents and time pressure. This harms the guest experience – and makes hotels vulnerable to legal liability and fraud.
By replacing these troublesome manual workflows with mobile data capture, hotels can speed up check-ins significantly. At the same time, they minimize inaccuracies.
Implementing such an ID verification system has never been easier. Nowadays, everybody is carrying around powerful mini-computers – smartphones – anyway. Why not let staff make use of them for hotel ID verification?
Replace manual data entry with mobile data capture for ID verification
With data capture technologies such as Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and barcode scanning, mobile solutions can automate the extraction of information from ID documents. This is not only faster, but also dramatically more accurate.
OCR technology enables the automatic detection and extraction of text information from structured documents. It identifies and converts specific text elements from a scanned or photographed image into a digital format.
Many identification documents, like passports and ID cards, are designed with OCR in mind: They contain Machine-Readable Zones (MRZs), standardized sections with key personal information of the document holder. Using OCR technology, MRZ scanners extract this information and structure it into key-value pairs for further processing. The extracted data can be used to verify the authenticity of the document.
The same approach can be used for ID documents that lack a MRZ – though many of these now sport barcodes.
Mobile barcode scanning extracts information from the PDF417 barcodes present on some identification documents, among them U.S. and Canadian driver’s licenses. The encoded information includes the holder’s full name, birth date, nationality, and information about the card.
Since this is sensitive personal data, however, mobile data capture and processing of these ID documents should happen locally on the scanner device, without connection to third-party servers. This protects the data and ensures compliance with data privacy regulations such as the GDPR and CCPA.
Turn smartphones into mobile data capture devices with the Scanbot SDK
Streamlining guest ID verification with mobile data capture is straightforward. All you need is smart devices for your staff, like smartphones or tablets, and advanced data capture software. Look for a solution that can do both: data extraction from ID documents and barcode scanning. Thanks to methods such as BYOD, where employees use their own devices, you can minimize the cost of hardware and ongoing maintenance.
The Scanbot SDK Mobile ID Scanning Software is a software development kit that allows developers to integrate fast and secure ID scanning capabilities into their apps – all within one business day. It rapidly extracts data from the MRZs and PDF417 barcodes of various ID documents, including passports and driver’s licenses. Data extraction with the Scanbot SDK is far faster and more accurate than manual data entry.
Notably, all processing happens on-device, without connection to third-party servers. This ensures data and privacy protection in compliance with regulations like the GDPR and CCPA.
If you want to learn more about our solution, contact us at sdk@scanbot.io. Or see for yourself how the Scanbot SDK Data Capture Modules perform in our free demo apps.
