Royal Caribbean RFID WOWbands Will See Gradual Rollout
By Christine Kern, contributing writer
Introduced on the Quantum of the Seas, WOWbands will make their way through the fleet over the next several years
As Hospitality Leader Online reported earlier this fall, Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. introduced the new FRID WOWbands on its new Quantum of the Seas liner. Service on the "smartship" will include high-speed Internet, which is usually very expensive and notoriously unreliable on other cruise ships.
The Internet connection will enable passengers to interact with radio frequency identification (RFID) bracelet that they will receive upon arrival and will keep them connected to the ship's network. The bracelets will manage room access, onboard purchases and dining and tour reservations. And because they are rubber-protected, they will never demagnetize, unlike the magnetic ID key cards most cruise ships use.
A Quantum vacation begins at home, where guests can generate boarding documents online, upload their own ID photo, and receive digital boarding confirmation. By the time they arrive at the cruise terminal for departure, Royal Caribbean guests can go from “sidewalk to ship” in 10 minutes with no check-in counter, no forms to fill out and no lines to stand in.
Guests will be able to track luggage in real time on their smartphones. Luggage will be tagged curbside with RFID technology at drop-off, and guests can monitor their bags’ progress through key points en route to the stateroom. On departure, the process is reversed.
Passengers can also book dining reservations, shore tours and other cruise activities before departure, and that information and all their necessary check-in documents can be ready and loaded on their RFID bracelets when they arrive.
In addition, a new app called "Royal IQ" will track the ID, stateroom, preferences and reservations of each passenger and provide maps of the ship and its daily schedule of events at the push of a button. Tapping the RFID bracelets with a finger will allow guests to interact with "Royal IQ" with hand signals at screens stationed throughout the ship.
But speaking at the CruiseWorld Conference, Royal Caribbean President Adam Goldstein said that a fleet-wide rollout of the technology will take several years, according to Travel Weekly.
The timeline for the rollout is the result of the fact that while the radio-frequency identification (RFID) wristbands are simple, they go hand-in-hand with a more complicated new shipboard property management system , Goldstein explained.
“The next-generation embarkation and the RFID bands will kind of follow that process,” Goldstein said in a speech at the CruiseWorld conference, a Travel Weekly event. Royal Caribbean will integrate the new technology on a ship by ship basis, and Goldstein did not indicate which liner would be next.