How keyless check-in works, and why a 2am arrival is fine

There is no key to collect here, and nobody waiting up to hand you one. When your booking is paid you are sent a numeric code, you type it into the keypad on your own door, and you are in.

That sounds like a small convenience. For anyone who has landed late, or sat in traffic watching a check-in window close, it is the difference between a reasonable evening and a bad one.

What you receive, and when

The code is created the moment your payment is confirmed, and it is sent to you straight away. It is six digits in the usual case, it belongs to your booking alone, and it is not a code shared with other guests or reused between stays.

If you booked more than one room separately, each room has its own code. If you booked a whole apartment, the party gets one code for it, because the doors inside are all yours.

When it starts working, and when it stops

This is the part worth reading twice, because it is where expectations usually go wrong with keyless entry.

• Your code begins working at check-in time, 2pm on your arrival day.
• It stops working at check-out, 11am on your departure day.
• Outside that window the lock will refuse it. That is the lock doing its job, not a fault.

There is one deliberate exception. If you arrive early and the front desk checks you in before 2pm, your code is brought forward there and then, and it works immediately. So an early arrival is a conversation with the desk rather than an hour spent outside your own room.

Arriving in the middle of the night

A 2am arrival needs nothing special. Your code already works, the gate is manned, and you can go straight to your room without speaking to anybody.

If you would rather see a face, the desk is staffed around the clock. Plenty of guests prefer to check in properly on arrival and ask where things are, and that is entirely normal.

If the keypad refuses your code

It is uncommon, and it is almost always one of four things. Work down the list before assuming the lock is broken:

1. You are early. Check your arrival date and the time. Before 2pm on day one, the code is not live yet.
2. A digit went astray. Type it again, slowly. Most keypads need a deliberate press rather than a fast one.
3. You are at the wrong door. A code opens your room and no other, so a wrong door refuses a correct code.
4. The stay has ended. After 11am on your last day the code retires automatically.

If none of those is it, call the desk. A replacement code can be issued and placed on your door in under a minute, from the office, without anybody coming up with a toolkit.

What the code is, and what it is not

It is worth being precise, because "digital lock" covers a lot of very different things.

Your code is written into the lock itself, over the air, before you arrive. It is not a code the lock checks against the internet when you type it, which matters: your door works whether or not the Wi-Fi is up, whether or not our office is online, and whether or not your phone has signal.

What it is not is a password you should treat casually. Anyone with those digits can open that door for as long as the stay runs. Three things follow:

• Do not put it in a group chat or on social media.
• Do not read it out where you can be overheard at the keypad.
• Tell us if you think somebody has it who should not. We will replace it in under a minute, and the old one stops working the moment we do.

If there are several of you

Everybody on the booking uses the same code for the same door. That is usually what people want: four friends sharing an apartment do not want four different numbers for the same front door.

If you would rather each bedroom had its own code, book the rooms separately rather than as one apartment. Rooms sold individually get a code each, which is the right behaviour for colleagues travelling together, where one person should not be able to open another's room.

Checking out

Nothing to do. Leave when you like, settle anything outstanding, and go. Your code retires on its own at 11am, and it is removed from the lock rather than left to lapse.

There is no key to drop at a desk, which also means there is nothing to forget in a pocket and post back from another city.

Why we do it this way

A key is a thing that can be lost, copied, and handed back late. A code is a thing that can be cancelled.

That is the honest reason. When a stay ends, the code is removed from the lock itself rather than merely forgotten about in an office, so a previous guest cannot walk back in later. If a phone carrying a code is lost, that code can be killed in seconds and another issued, while the guest stands at the door.

It also means there is no key deposit, no key to leave behind on the last morning, and no queue at a desk at the exact moment everybody wants to leave.

What we still need from you at the desk

Keyless does not mean anonymous. Nigerian properties are expected to keep a guest register, so on arrival or shortly after we take your name and a form of identification. It takes a minute and it is the same information any hotel would record.

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Ready to pick dates? See what is free, or browse the rooms first. If anything above is still unclear, the questions page goes into more detail and the front desk answers at any hour.

Written by the team at Nobleyy Apartment.