Is this the best hotel amenity ever?

I was recently in Singapore for a few days, on business. While I'll be writing in detail about this trip, I spent one night at the Holiday Inn Singapore Atrium, to help my cause for IHG’s Accelerate 2016 and Book Direct promotions. Anyway, I had to meet some friends for lunch, so one of the things I didn’t notice until I returned to my room later in the afternoon, was a smartphone called handy, that was placed in the room.

The signage near the phone was hotel-branded, so I initially disregarded it as some sort of ancillary revenue generating promotion by the hotel. Turns out, it is way cooler than that! 

Let me introduce you to handy. 

handy is a smartphone that allows you free access to a smartphone that you can use to make local and international calls (to specific countries), free 3G or 4G internet within the city, a built-in city guide, ongoing local promotions and discounts, etc. 

I looked up more information about handy, and connected with Tink Labs, a Hong Kong based technology incubator that believes in the capacity for mobile technology to simplify life’s many complications. 

Here’s more about handy…

handy is your personal smartphone for the duration of your stay, designed to "connect the disconnected", allowing tourists to travel like locals. When a guest checks in to a handy-partnered hotel, a fully customized handy smartphone is already waiting in the room. It comes with

• unlimited mobile data 
• unlimited mobile connectivity – local and international calls to specific countries 
• a city guide, 
• a slew of city-specific offers, and
• hotel information, such as spa, restaurant and fitness center guides.

Guests can book many of the offers and facilities via handy itself. The home screen is in a newsfeed format that pushes out new travel tips and recommendations by the minute. Guests can also purchase and use tickets directly on handy, often at discounted rates.

You can even take it out of the hotel!

What’s more, you can take pictures, stream videos, download apps, etc. You even get your own phone number associated with the handy, where others can reach you directly.

The phone is completely free for the duration of the guest's stay. And once the guest checks-out, all personal data on handy is erased to ensure privacy isn't a concern.

Where can you find handy?

handy is currently available at select hotels in Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, Bangkok, Istanbul, London and Paris and will soon be available in Barcelona, Dubai, Madrid, Milan, Rome, amongst other cities globally. In Hong Kong and Singapore alone, I believe they have access to 30,000 hotel rooms, mainly across three- to five-star hotels such as the Sheraton, Grand Hyatt, Fullerton Hotel, InterContinental, Regent, some Holiday Inn hotels, etc.

Conclusion

While I do have international roaming on my India-based handphone, it can be prohibitively expensive when used overseas. So I usually also carry a local SIM card that I purchase in India (such as Matrix, which can also yield some additional JP miles!). This gives me a local number in my country of travel, and also much needed free calls and data usage (usually these come with a limit). handy eliminates the need to carry a local SIM card, saving costs that can sometimes be substantial (especially if you've exceeded your usage limit).

The only time you wouldn't have local number access would be between arriving in the city and reaching your hotel room. That could be solved by making handy available at the airport by some means (possibly the hotel's airport desk, if they have one, or handy's own desk if they set one up). 

In all, I think this is a serious value add for hotel stays, and can potentially be a huge selling point for hotels as well. No wonder I regard it as the best hotel amenity ever!