Hilton Hotels announced today that 37 of its properties are equipped with lobby kiosks that can allow guests to check in for flights, change or upgrade seats, and print boarding passes for 18 airlines.
The ability to manually print out boarding passes is an upgrade to existing features of the kiosks, which already allow guests to view hotel reservations, check in and out and view their hotel folio data. Hilton said that implementation of the new capabilities at other properties would be done on a case-by-case basis.
InterContinental Hotels Group last year outfitted kiosks at the Holiday Inn Gwinnett Center in Duluth, Ga., with the ability to print out airline boarding passes, which it has been testing as part of its "next-generation property design"
(BTN, April 18, 2005). IHG expects to supply the entire Holiday Inn system with the new technology by year-end. Marriott International currently has similar functionality at its Detroit Marriott Renaissance Center property and expects to expand it to three more hotels in the upcoming weeks. Starwood Hotels & Resorts said that it currently does not have enough airline partners to offer such a tool.
Hilton now offers the capability to print airline boarding passes from lobby kiosks at properties in Anchorage, Alaska; Little Rock, Ark.; Anaheim, Burbank, Oakland Airport, San Francisco & Towers, and San Francisco Fisherman's Wharf, Calif.; Walt Disney World Village, Fla.; Atlanta; Hawaiian Village, Hawaii; Downtown Chicago, Chicago O'Hare and Oakbrook Terrace, Ill.; New Orleans; Boston Back Bay and Boston Logan Airport, Mass.; Minneapolis; Omaha, Neb.; East Brunswick and Woodcliff Lakes, N.J.; New York City hotels including The Waldorf-Astoria; Portland, Ore.; Harrisburg and Pittsburgh, Pa.; Brentwood and Memphis, Tenn; Austin, Houston and DFW Lakes, Texas; Alexandria, McLean, Norfolk Airport and Washington Dulles, Va.; Washington, D.C.; and Vancouver, B.C.