OCR turns a photo of a document into ready-to-use data. Here is how it works in check-in and why it removes errors.
What OCR means for check-in
OCR (optical character recognition) is the technology that turns the image of a document into structured text. Applied to check-in, it means the guest photographs their document and the system extracts their data automatically, with no one having to type it.
In practice, what used to be filling in a form field by field becomes taking a photo and reviewing the result.
Which documents it can read
A good OCR engine recognises the identity documents common at a tourist accommodation: the Spanish DNI, the NIE, and international passports.
Passports and many modern documents also have an MRZ —those two or three lines of characters at the bottom— designed precisely for fast, reliable automated reading.
Why it reduces errors versus typing by hand
Manual transcription is the main source of errors in traveller registration: a mistyped document number, a reversed date, an incomplete surname. Any of those can invalidate a report.
OCR reads exactly what the document says, and the guest reviews the result before confirming. The data reaches SES Hospedajes correct.
Privacy: the document is not stored
An important point. The Spanish Data Protection Agency has warned that accommodations should not request or keep copies —photocopies or photographs— of identity documents: doing so is excessive data collection.
So the principle any check-in system must meet is that only the data the law requires is extracted from the document, and no image of it is stored. If an image is captured in order to read it, it must be processed transiently and discarded immediately.
How BookCheckin does it
With BookCheckin, the guest scans their document with the phone camera during online check-in. The AI engine extracts name, surnames, document number, nationality, and date of birth, and the guest reviews them.
The data is validated and filed with SES Hospedajes — no manual transcription and no stored document copies. Fast for the guest and correct for compliance.