A 40-second check-in is a design choice

Watch a motel desk at 7 pm on a Friday. The check-in that takes four minutes is not four minutes of work — it is one minute of work and three minutes of typing: name, address, plate, card, ID number, all copied from documents sitting right there into boxes on a screen.

So we designed Innkeep's check-in backwards from the guest's documents. Scan the licence or passport and the guest's record fills itself. Confirm the room the board already shows. Take the payment. Hand over the key. About forty seconds, most of it conversation — which is the part of check-in guests actually remember.

Speed is not the point. The point is what a short line does to a small motel: the owner is not trapped behind the desk, the guest is not studying the lobby carpet, and the one person working that night can also answer the phone, fix the ice machine, and be a host instead of a data-entry clerk.

Every motel system will tell you check-in is “fast.” Ask them to show you, with a real guest's documents, on a real Friday. We will — it is the first thing that happens on our demo.

— Ravin Bhakta