When Tink Labs Founder and CEO and creator of handy.travel, Terence Kwok, started his company in Hong Kong six years ago, he leased a counter at Hong Kong’s airport to rent smartphones to tourists: “we wanted travelers to get connectivity”.
Tink Labs began as a device rental service targeting travelers at airports, but moved towards hotels when the team found that the business wasn’t as scalable as they had hoped: “We quickly realized people just want to get the hell out of the airport. We only had two customers: it was a failure”, noted Kwok at a recent panel discussion at Ecole hôtelière de Lausanne.
Handy’s business model is quite simple. Mobile phones are supplied to a hotel property for a flat fee, allowing hoteliers to replace their landline phones. On the other end, guests are offered the free use of a mobile phone during their stay in the hotel, avoiding exorbitant roaming fees and connectivity issues for travelers.
“We are trying to do something new and different, and we are doing it in a space that traditionally has not seen a lot of innovation. We are leveraging the hotel room as a space to catch information.”
Handy has evolved rapidly over the past six years and is designed as a single touchpoint guests can rely on while traveling abroad, including; Google maps, room service, city guides and ticket booking.
Why would hotels deploy handy in their rooms? “Because we create value, information and analytics about guests. Hotels lose touch with you as a consumer and as a tourist. We want to extend the hotel footprint through a single device.”
“We are now working with hotels, from Holiday Inn to Ritz Carlton, from DoubleTree to Park Hyatt, all over the world.”
Handy is now present in over 600,000 hotel rooms across 80 countries and has offices in a dozen countries.