The Accorhotel Apple Watch app will work in connection with a smartphone to manage reservations, access hotel information and property maps,
and notify guests when a room is ready for online check-in. IHG’s Apple Watch app is a port of its popular smartphone language translator. It will convert the words a user speaks into the watch into 13 different languages and even offer phonetic pronunciation help as well as a range of common phrases.
At an event in San Francisco earlier this week, Apple released more details on its new watch and showed off a few apps. Along with displaying the weather, making calls (as long as your phone is nearby), and tracking your fitness, the watch will also support Apple Pay, a mobile payment system that processes credit card transactions without the need to swipe an actual card. Ahead of the event, Marriott announced it would be the first hotel company to use Apple Pay, and would roll it out this summer at select Ritz-Carlton, Courtyard, Residence Inn, and Edition properties in New York, Los Angeles, Washington, San Francisco, Miami, and Chicago.
Apple Pay uses the near field communication (NFC) chip in an iPhone 6 or Apple Watch to communicate with specially equipped card readers, providing more security than old-school magnetic card swipers. While this could be a huge money maker for Apple, with analysts predicting that mobile payment systems will process $700 billion in transactions by 2017, it also offers hotels a new tool to measure guests’ habits and preferences.
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