When traveling overseas and if you want to stay in contact with your friends and family back home, there’s always the option of roaming, although it does get pretty expensive. An alternative would be to get a local SIM card but in the case of some carriers that locked the SIMs on their phones, this might pose a problem as well.
Well if you’re ever in Hong Kong, perhaps the Hyatt Regency might be a hotel worth checking out because it seems that during their stay, guests are provided with a free smartphone that they can use during their time at the hotel. The handset in question is the Alcatel OneTouch Idol X which might not necessarily be the most powerful or latest smartphone, but should be good enough to get the job done.
The handsets will be provided in every room, which is 381 in total, and will come with unlimited data, tethering in case you want to use it with your laptop or tablet, and will come with unlimited voice calls to countries such as the US, UK, Australia, China, Singapore, and naturally Hong Kong.
The phone will also come bundled with pre-installed apps like Facebook, Instagram, and Skype, and it even allows the user to log in with their own Google Play account to download additional apps if they want. Upon checkout, all you’d have to do is hit the “clear data” button which basically resets the phone back to its original state where it can be used by the next guest.
In terms of privacy we’re sure there are some who might be wary about phones that might have been used by hundreds of guests in the past, but if you just want a phone to do some light surfing and make calls without racking up a huge bill back home, this should do the trick. Then again the Hyatt Regency in Tsim Sha Tsui isn’t exactly a budget hotel either so in the end your stay might get pretty pricey, but if you can afford it, it does seem like a pretty nice amenity.