Most hotels in the country are initially designed to be licensed by China's mainland mobile phone number.——Whether it's a business hotel in the first city or a resort in hot tourist destinations.——Last year, when we upgraded a hotel in Sanya, we counted last year’s foreign guests: the annual rate of outside visitors was nearly 35%, with more than 40 countries. This means that at least one-third of the guests are locked out if the WiFi real name certification system is only able to support mainland China’s mobile phone number certification.
The legal requirements for foreign customer certification are not special.
It is wrong to make a common misunderstanding: some people think that foreign guests don't need real name certification for WiFi. China’s Internet authenticated laws apply to all users of public Internet services in China, without distinction as to nationality.——Foreign guests do not have a Chinese mainland mobile phone number or, if they may be, a short-term tourist card, find equivalent physical identification. There are three types of practices that are currently common in the industry: passport information certification, foreign cellular code certification, and front desk support certification.
Technical realization and hidden formation of passport certification
The WiFi Real Name Certification System for the hotel, which supports passport certification, sounds like a lot to me.——First, the forms of national passport numbers are varied, with some letters and figures mixed, some with special symbols, and others ranging from six to 12. Many legal passports can be wrongly certified if checked in a fixed format. Second, the access to passport information is a problem: mobile phone number authentication can be automatically verified by the operator ' s real name database, and there is no online verification interface for passport certification that facilitates this. The current practice in the industry is that, after receiving passport information from a customer, the hotel WiFi authenticated system checks the client's entry registration data for consistency and manual release on the traveler system. This has an additional part of the front desk workflow and requires training. Another approach is to re-use the data from the travel system directly, which was submitted by the customer when he entered, and the certification system obtained this information automatically from PMS, so that customers can confirm it.
The foreign cell phone's SMS access problem.
If the WiFi real name certification system wants to authenticate text message code with an offshore cell number, the biggest challenge is coverage and arrival rates for international SMS channels. International SMS is not a network of three major operators in the country, involving travel and interconnectivity among different operators from different countries, and has varied access rates. We have measured that, together with an international SMS service provider, the average rate of arrival to SoftBank in Japan exceeds 95%, and to parts of Africa less than 50%. And international texting costs a lot more than domestic text messaging, and one could cost two to thirty cents, which is not negligible if the hotel guest ratio is high. So mobile phone certification outside the country is better suited in practice as an auxiliary rather than a primary program.
Front desk support certification is the bottom line.
Regardless of how well the technical program is, there are cases where passport information cannot be verified, a foreign cell phone number cannot receive text messages, or even a complete lack of cooperation with customers. This time, the WiFi real name certification system must have a front-office access to the back-office. The key to this process is that front desk operations must be systematically and fully documented, including operators, operating hours, associated customer information, and certification methods to ensure that the audit retroactive chain remains intact. At the same time, front desk access to authentication should be strictly controlled, and only authorized front desk staff can operate to avoid abuse.
Multilingual Portal pages are not just a translation issue
Multilingual support is not a problem if the Hotel WiFi Real name certification system page serves foreign guests."We'll do it later."The Chinese language is not only translated into English.——We have seen a hotel page in English Portal, apparently translated by machine."Cell phone number."It's been turned over."Phone Number"——This is right in Chinese, but it should be used more precisely in English."Mobile Number", because the number of the seat can also be Phone Number. There is a problem with layout: the same text may have two lines under Chinese and translation into English four lines, which could spill if Portal was designed in Chinese. These are not major problems but they affect foreign guests’ judgement about hotel professionalism.
International compliance considerations for privacy policy
The WiFi system of hotel names collects personal information on foreign guests, and in addition to complying with Chinese laws and regulations, it also takes into account the privacy implications of their home country.——If a EU citizen uses WiFi in Chinese hotels, whether his personal information is collected and processed under the GDPR is a controversial topic. While there are no high risks of actual enforcement, if the hotel is an international brand or has a large European Union customer base, it is recommended that the privacy policy text should contain a separate description of how information from international guests is handled, avoiding potential legal risk.
The issue of foreign clients’ accreditation is easily overlooked during the establishment phase of the WiFi Real Name Certification System in the hotel, as it affects only a few scenes. But disputes often arise in a few settings.——A foreign business guest who did not write a bad English comment could have had more negative communication effects than 10 Chinese.