Why Hotels Must Add Wireless Charging
Back in 2018, we wrote about how hotels should start adding wireless charging to their guestrooms. 3 years later, and it is no longer a matter of “should” as it has now become a matter of “must.”
We won’t get into all the benefits of wireless charging, as you can read more about them here. Instead, we’ll focus on how, at this point, it really doesn’t make ANY sense for hoteliers to add a charging solution that doesn’t have wireless charging.
Watching Apple
Rumors have been swirling and picking up credibility that Apple is about to remove the charging port all together on their next iPhones. That’s right, starting this year, there’s a reasonable chance that the ONLY way to charge the newest iPhones will be through Wireless Charging.
That doesn’t mean USB isn’t important, as it’s still the main charging method for many other popular accessories; but what it does mean is there looms the possibility that guests in the near future will arrive with wireless-only iPhones. Many guests with these new iPhones will bring their own wireless charger that plugs into a USB port; but some won’t. Either way the importance and ubiquity of wireless charging will be supercharged by such an iPhone change, and no doubt more and more guests will be looking for it.
Of course, there’s no guarantee this will happen in 2021, but it’s pretty clear this is Apple's ultimate goal - as made evident by the removal of the home button, the headphone jack, etc. The end game is (and has always been) a completely wireless ecosystem. This quote from CNET sums it up perfectly:
Apple's been warning its users to a life without Lightning cables for a while now. First, the iPhone came with wireless charging, then the AirPods followed suit, and this year we finally got the USB-C to Lightning cable with the iPhone 11 Pro.
But let’s say that’s still a couple years off, it still makes way more sense to add wireless charging over any other charging method because you KNOW that will be included, as it’s been on every iPhone since the iPhone 8 in 2017. It’s risky, however, to only add USB-C, USB-A, AC, etc, as there’s a reasonable chance that the new iPhones will NOT be able to charge via those methods.
So the main question hoteliers should be asking themselves is - do I want to risk adding a product that won’t be able to charge many of my guests phones? Yeah, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to us either.
Helpful Links
https://www.cnet.com/news/will-apple-get-rid-charging-port-too-all-signs-point-portless-iphones/
https://www.cnet.com/reviews/apple-airpods-2019-review/
https://www.macworld.com/article/233648/how-and-why-would-apple-kill-the-iphones-lightning-port.html
https://www.macrumors.com/2020/12/02/iphone-13-could-remove-another-standard-feature/