OCR technology in CiHMS proceeds check-in process within seconds
The great news is here. Our hospitality management solution – CiHMS just came out with the new feature, which uses OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technology to speed up the check-in process for hotel guests. Quickly scan, quickly stored in our VinBigdata and the amazing technology would make all guests go from A to Z in seconds. In today’s blog, we’ll be sharing with you this great cool OCR technology and how it works with CiHMS.
OCR technology is now integrated with our hospitality management solution – CiHMS allows you to get your guest check-in at a much faster pace
What is OCR then?
OCR is short for Optical Character Recognition or also known as Optical Character Reader first invented in 1914. Since then, the technology has been developed to improve its accuracy. To this date, OCR technology has come somewhat near its perfection. The technology is used to convert text, handwritten text, typed prints in images, photos, paper documents into machine-readable text data. Early on, OCR technology was to serve purposes to the blinds, the visually impaired populations. Thanks to its conveniences and usefulness today, OCR technology is now widely used in various industries.
OCR technology was invented at the beginning of the 1910s, but only gained its popularity in recent decades, especially in the travel and hotel industries
For the hotel sectors, OCR has been applied to shorten the guests’ check-in process. Together with the cashless payment trend, which we have discussed in our previous blog, OCR technology shall take us a step closer to making a contactless hotel experience possible. Traditionally, once your guest arrives at the hotel front desk, the employee has to scan their guests’ personal identification papers and manually enter each customer’s data from those scanned files onto the system. How can things be different with the OCR technology?
How does it work with our hospitality management solution – CiHMS?
Thanks to OCR technology integrated with our hospitality management solution, the employee can quickly “scan” guest personal identification through a tablet or mobile device’s camera from the CiHMS staff app. The system then automatically recognizes all the fields to input them into the system.
To dive a bit deeper into the technical aspect of it, this merely is the “transporting” information process between CiHMS and VinBigdata. As soon as CiHMS Staff app has received the information (in this case, are photos taken by employee’s tablet, mobile devices, or via an ID card reader), it would immediately send the images to VinBigdata where the OCR technology would analyze, process and come back with results to CiHMS. This allows the CiHMS to create the profile with this given information respectively. Automation might be intimidating to many hoteliers, but it minimizes the risk of human errors and keeps data stored efficiently. Check-in can now be done without an actual front-desk staff, customers can come in and scan their personal identification documents through a scanner and get check-in automatically if their information matches with their bookings on the system.
What are the types of personal identification that CiHMS supports?
There are 9 different kinds of personal identification CiHMS system currently supports:
- Vietnam national identification (old version)
- Vietnam citizen identity card
- Vietnam new chip-based citizen identity card
- Vietnam birth certification
- Passports of all countries
- Class A1 driver license
- Class A2 driver license
- Class B1 driver license
- Class B2 driver license
If your hotel needs assistance in other types of personal identification, please contact us with your requests. We would be more than happy to receive your feedback and inquiries.
This latest feature has been updated and applied to at least 35 hotel properties of our clients. Using tablets to boost the check-in process has definitely given our customer’s guests a professional first impression of the hotel operation process. This is one of the many amazing features we have been planning to release since April as we mentioned back in our series blog “A new approach to hospitality management solution – CiHMS is ready for the world”. Meanwhile, look out for our upcoming webinar this month on “How can Hotels survive through the COVID-19 Pandemic”. Drop us your thoughts on this new feature, what feature would you like your hotel management solution to have, leave them down in the comment section down below.
