Guests check in from their phone — before they arrive.
Send a pre-arrival link. Capture ID, pre-authorize the card, and issue a digital room key — all in 90 seconds. No app download, no queue at reception, no paperwork.
Pre-arrival link
Email + SMS, scheduled per property
ID upload & verify
GDPR + PCI compliant
Pre-authorize card
3-D Secure enforced
Get digital key
Works with BLE, NFC, TTLock
Room 412 — Floor 4
Key unlocks at 15:00
The problem
Why front desks are losing the war
Guests who book a 4-star hotel in 2026 expect airline-grade self-service. The properties that do not deliver pay for it in reviews, staffing hours, and OTA dependency.
63%
want self check-in
OTA guests skip your desk
63% of Booking.com arrivals now expect self-service check-in. Forcing them to queue at reception feels dated — and they review it that way.
40%
arrive in a 2-hour window
Arrival bottlenecks at 3 PM
Every property sees the same wave: 40% of guests show up between 2 PM and 4 PM. One front-desk agent against twelve arrivals is a recipe for complaints.
15 min
saved per arrival
Staff shortage is permanent
Hospitality vacancy rates sit at 8–10% in most markets. Online check-in offloads 15 minutes of work per arrival so your team focuses on actual hospitality.
0
paper forms
Contactless is the new baseline
Post-pandemic guest expectations never reverted. Hotels that still require paper forms and passport photocopies lose direct-booking conversions to chains that do not.
How it works
Four steps. Ninety seconds. Zero paper.
Each step is designed to complete on a phone in a taxi — fat-finger-friendly buttons, generous tap targets, zero required typing beyond what the OCR misses.
Pre-arrival link
Guest receives a branded email 48 hours before arrival with a secure check-in link. No app download required — the flow runs in any mobile browser.
Email + SMS, scheduled per property
ID upload & verify
Passport or ID card captured with the phone camera. OCR extracts name, nationality, and document number. Face-match confirms the holder matches the ID.
GDPR + PCI compliant
Pre-authorize card
Guest adds a card for incidentals. SwiftGuest pre-authorizes through Rapyd, Tranzila, or PayPal — zero chargeback risk at arrival.
3-D Secure enforced
Get digital key
Room assigned automatically from availability. Guest receives the digital key 20 minutes before check-in time — walk straight to the room.
Works with BLE, NFC, TTLock
Guest journey
From booking to bed — traced end to end
Every touchpoint your guest has with your property between the confirmation email and the welcome note on the pillow.
Invitation lands in the inbox
Two days before arrival, guest receives the pre-check-in link. Subject line, logo, and tone match your brand — sent through your own authenticated sending domain.
ID and card captured
Guest opens the link on their phone. The flow takes 90 seconds: scan passport, snap selfie for face-match, tap-to-pay with Apple Pay or Google Pay for the pre-auth.
Room auto-allocated
SwiftGuest picks the best available room based on length of stay, accessibility flags, and housekeeping status — then notifies the guest which floor they are on.
Walk to the room
Guest bypasses the desk entirely. Digital key unlocks the door. If they want a welcome drink or local tips, a one-tap chat opens in-app.
Upsells in-app
Breakfast add-on, late checkout, parking, airport transfer — all priced, confirmed, and billed to the folio without a phone call.
Built for operations
What is under the hood
Multilingual by default
The guest flow auto-detects language from the device locale. Supported: English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese, Hebrew, Arabic, Japanese, Chinese, Dutch, Polish.
Digital registration card
Country-specific fields preloaded — passport number, visa type, purpose of visit, fiscal code. Signature captured on-screen. Archived as searchable PDF for police reporting.
Biometric face-match
Compares the selfie to the photo on the government-issued ID. Flags mismatches for human review before the key is issued. No false acceptance beyond 1 in 100,000.
No-app experience
Progressive web app — opens instantly from the link, no install prompt, no app-store friction. Works on iOS 14+ and Android 9+ browsers.
GDPR + local tax law
Data retention windows configurable per property. Automatic purge after statutory period. Supports Italian PS form, French fiche individuelle, Spanish parte de viajeros.
Fraud screening built-in
Device fingerprint, IP geolocation, velocity checks. Cards flagged as high-risk get an extra step-up authentication before the pre-auth clears.
The difference
Traditional check-in vs SwiftGuest
| Metric | Traditional front desk | SwiftGuest online check-in |
|---|---|---|
| Average desk time | 8–12 minutes | 0 minutes |
| Peak-hour queue | Up to 20 minutes | None |
| Paper registration cards | Yes — filed manually | Digital — auto-archived |
| Card pre-auth success | 78% | 96% |
| ID photocopy handling | Physical scan at desk | Encrypted at rest |
| Night arrivals (after 10 PM) | Needs night auditor | Self-service |
Complete the stack
Pairs with lobby kiosk and digital key
Three ways to check a guest in. One reservation. One folio. One source of truth.
Online check-in
Guest phone, before arrival. Best for OTA and direct bookings 48h ahead.
You are here
Integrations
Plays with everything in your stack
SwiftGuest PMS
Native — the check-in writes directly to the reservation, no middleware.
TTLock
Issues time-bound BLE keys once the flow completes.
Salto KS
Cloud-based mobile keys for Salto-equipped doors.
Assa Abloy VingCard
Mobile Access writes to the guest’s phone over BLE.
Rapyd / Tranzila / PayPal
Pre-auth holds until checkout; captured on the folio.
Channex + Booking.com
Pulls in OTA reservations; sends the invite automatically.
Questions
Frequently asked
Do guests need to download an app?
No. The entire flow runs in the phone’s default browser. It is a progressive web app — the first link click loads everything needed, and subsequent visits cache offline. Works on iOS Safari, Chrome, Samsung Internet, and Firefox.
What if the guest cannot or will not check in online?
Completely optional. Reception always stays available as a fallback. The front-desk agent sees which guests have completed the online flow and which still need to register — both queues are managed in the same dashboard.
How does ID verification work?
The guest photographs their passport or national ID. OCR extracts the machine-readable zone and populates the registration card. A selfie is then matched to the ID photo using on-device biometrics — no image leaves the device in raw form.
What happens to the card pre-authorization?
At the end of the flow, SwiftGuest places a pre-auth hold through your payment gateway — Rapyd, Tranzila, or PayPal. The hold sits on the guest’s card until checkout, when the folio balance is captured or released.
Can it handle groups and multi-room bookings?
Yes. The booker receives a single link; each room in the reservation has its own registration card. Guests can complete their own, or the booker can fill them in on behalf of everyone.
Is it compliant with local registration laws?
The registration form is configurable per country. Italy’s Alloggiati Web, France’s Fiche Individuelle de Police, Spain’s Parte de Viajeros, and similar requirements are handled with exportable and signed PDFs.
How does this pair with a lobby kiosk?
Guests who did not complete online check-in finish at the kiosk — or you can skip the online flow entirely if your market prefers in-lobby self-service. Same backend, same reservation, zero double-entry. See our Kiosk page.
What does pricing look like?
Online check-in is included on every Professional and above SwiftGuest plan. No per-guest fees, no per-check-in surcharges. See the Pricing page for plan details.
Stop making guests queue
Switch on online check-in today. Every reservation that arrives tomorrow lands with a pre-auth, a verified ID, and a room key already in the guest pocket.