[mft_]

So I’ve ranting for years that hotels and car rental places should automate check-in - it should take only seconds to get your key with pre-filled data and a QR code.

This week, I had my first experience with exactly this at a car hire company. It was… not smooth.

It took multiple attempts (with requests for help to the employees in between) to get the system to recognise our code, whereupon we learned (by way of an unhelpful generic error message) that the system had somehow given someone else ‘our’ car. After another round of asking for human help, we had to wait while someone came outside, unlocked the machine, and put the keys for our new car inside. We then went through the code process again, and were finally given the keys.

The vision is somewhere there, but the execution isn’t exactly the future we’re hoping for!

[vel0city]

The last two times I've rented a car have been with Avis, both times in about the last year. The first of these times they had rolled out their nearly fully automated workflow. Check in on my phone, it told me which car in the lot was mine, gave me a chance to report any existing damages. Rolled to the exit, had a QR code on my phone scanned, rolled through some camera tunnel, and I was on my way. There was a guy at the exit making sure things went smoothly.

The next time their computer system was hard down. Everything by paper in person. They didn't have enough forms for tracking it all, they were literally just writing things down on blank printer paper. No idea what cars were really in the lot. Show us your reservation and your id, we'll write it all down, and here's a key. Good luck finding the car. Was complete chaos.