A few weeks ago Sinead reviewed the new ‘Suite to Seat’ service offered by the Renaissance St Pancras hotel and Eurostar. Suite guests at the hotel now get fast tracked to their Eurostar seat with all luggage handled by porters.
As part of the service Sinead used the new iProov facial recognition system at St Pancras International. It only got a couple of paragraphs of a long article but I was intrigued – and keen to try it when I travelled on Eurostar on Tuesday.
It’s amazing. Like it or not, it’s also the future.
What does iProov.me do?
iProov replaces UK passport control at St Pancras. It’s like it doesn’t exist.
It also replaces the pre-security ticket check.
In theory iProov.me is restricted to Business Premier passengers, Carte Blanche and Etoile members of Club Eurostar and ‘Suite to Seat’ customers of the Renaissance hotel. Feedback from HfP readers suggests that this is not actually the case ….
How does iProov.me work?
You download the iProov.me app onto your mobile phone. After doing this, you need to do three things:
- take a picture of the photo page of your passport
- have the app ‘read’ the chip in your passport by holding your phone over the chip (you MUST have Bluetooth / NFC enabled, a key fact that the app fails to tell you and which caused me substantial grief)
- have the app make a scan of your face
That’s it. You can then input the booking reference of your Eurostar tickets.
On the day you travel ….
Here’s another non-customer friendly element, to add to ‘not being told you need Bluetooth / NFC enabled’. You MUST reconfirm your trip in the iProov app within 24 hours of departure. I don’t why, but that is the rule. This simply involves opening the app and clicking a button. I only realised this as I walking through St Pancras but luckily whatever it needed to re-confirm, confirmed instantly.
Eurostar queues can now be excessive, to put it mildly. Forget it. Head down to the Business Premier check-in lanes and, next to them, is a lane marked ‘Smart Check’:
You walk towards the sliding doors and they open.
That’s it. Your entire British passport check has been replaced by walking through a door. The doors open because facial recognition cameras outside see you approaching, scan your face, match it to your iProov.me profile, see that your passport information has been approved, see that you have a valid ticket and you are allowed through.
There is literally nothing to do. You don’t break your stride. You don’t stop to look into a camera. You don’t get a photograph taken. You don’t scan or show anyone your ticket. You don’t show any UK official your passport. You simply walk towards the door at your normal pace and it opens. You have cleared UK passport control.
It gets better ….
Beyond the door is an exclusive security lane for iProov.me customers. I had this all to myself.
When I mean ‘to myself’ I mean there was no-one in front of me and, in the couple of minutes I was unpacking my stuff, no-one came in behind me. This was at the morning peak, too. I’d be surprised if more than one person every 5 minutes was using iProov.me.
The security line for Business Premier next to me looked positively chaotic by comparison, with three people in the area.
Once you’ve cleared security, there is another perk. A member of staff lets you (makes you, actually) push in at the front of the queue for French passport control.
Conclusion
Using iProov.me you could, literally, get from a taxi outside St Pancras (if you get out by the Eurostar part) to the Business Premier lounge in five minutes.
It makes the trip from taxi to the Galleries First lounge for British Airways Gold cardholders at Heathrow Terminal 5 look positively slothful, at probably 6-7 minutes.
As I said, in theory you need to be in Business Premier, be Carte Blanche or Etoile in Club Eurostar or have paid for ‘Suite to Seat’ with the Renaissance to use this lane. This could well be correct. Various HfP readers have told me otherwise.
Irrespective, it’s a no-brainer if you do qualify by virtue of any of the categories above.
PS. It doesn’t work on the way back to London, sorry