Many of you have experienced Check-in at a Hotel at some point of time. People stand at the counter, fill & sign the form or register, etc. pay money & take keys of the room.

Have you ever checked-in thru iPad? Sitting at the lush Lobby?.

Many of you will wonder, what I?m up to.

It is a unique environment friendly initiative taken by a UAE hotel.

A fully integrated app takes in all the info including scanning your ID and your signature. Once that?s done, you are assigned your room number, you hook up to the hotel?s Wi-Fi and enter the number into a pop-up screen on your device — Android or iOS — and voila! you?re in future zone.

Vida Downtown Dubai is the first hotel in the UAE to use InnSpire which allows the guests to make use of all the hotel's services through their smartphone or tablet.

In your room, the entire system is replicated on the TV screen, which comes with a Wii-style ?air mouse? remote complete with a QWERTY keyboard that anyone who can switch on a television set can operate. You can play games, order food, read a newspaper (there?s very little paper used), check local attractions and even stream movies and music from your device.

The keyboard comes in handy when you?re typing out instructions to room service (make my chicken curry extra spicy, please) or bashing out an e-mail or showing off to your friends on Facebook and Twitter.

The beauty of it all is that this whole eco-system is with you everywhere, as long as you?re in the vicinity of the hotel. So you could be at the pool, or at the bar, and all the facilities that your room provides are right there with you, on your device.

[It] brings the hotel?s assets to life, it is eco-friendly as it is server-free — there?s literally one computer on the site — and provides the ability for the property to reduce costs.

The plan now is to expand the possibilities with InnSpire, Adding pre-arrival experiences, such as the possibility of checking in on your way to the hotel, all the way to in-room controls including cooling and lighting. But that will depend on many other parameters and involvement with the property.

Source: http://gulfnews.com/life-style/travel/destinations/a-switched-on-hotel-in-dubai-1.1220636