Why hotels still make you sign for a drink.

I’m just back from a few nights in a hotel in Tenerife. Every drink at the bar or meal at the restaurant came with a chit and a pen.

It was almost as frustrating as settling the bill at the end of a meal. I tap my phone to pay for nearly everything else, but the room charge still ran on a signature.

The hotel’s reasons are sensible enough. The signature is evidence if I dispute a charge at checkout. It stops someone giving my room number for their drinks. It’s where the tip goes. And it ties the charge to a server for cash-up.

All of that could be done at the terminal. Tap the room key and it identifies the room. The screen shows the name on the booking and I confirm it’s me, which ties the charge to the right guest even when several people on the booking hold a key. Then I approve the total and the tip. The record is digital and goes straight on my room charge. That’s better evidence than my scrawl on a chit.

So why is it still rare? Usually the bar POS can’t read the room key. The door locks, the POS and the PMS often come from different vendors, and the link between them is often just enough to post a charge against a room number. Reading a key at the till and pulling the guest details back from the booking needs more integration, and few have made it a priority.

Paying at the end of a meal has the same root. The tools to let a guest pay without waiting exist. What slows things down is how well they connect to everything else.

The friction a guest notices at the front usually comes from plumbing at the back end. It sits between systems, so no one vendor owns the fix.