CaelisCaelis

Every hotel check-in starts with an ID. Staff read the license or passport and type the guest’s name, date of birth, address and ID number into the booking system by hand. It is slow when the lobby is busy, and typing mistakes go straight into the guest record.

The desk also has to confirm the guest is 21 or older and that the ID has not expired. Those checks are done by eye, every time, by whoever is on shift.

I started from the front-desk check-in itself: what staff type, what they check by eye, and where mistakes get in. The fix had to work with the desk’s existing booking system, not replace it.

I designed and built Caelis. A phone reads the barcode on US and Canadian licenses and the printed strip on passports, checks age and expiry, and shows the issuing state’s emblem. The scan goes to the desk computer, where a Chrome extension fills in the booking form.

Privacy shaped the design from the start. Guest details are not stored on a server, and each scan travels end-to-end encrypted from the phone to the desk.

Caelis is live at caelis.io. It installs on a phone as a web app, and the Chrome extension fills the form on the desk computer. A scan takes about three seconds.

The front desk gets check-in without retyping, with age and expiry flagged automatically, and no copy of the guest’s ID kept on a server.