Apple and Google wallets are part of a plan to make the hotel room key card obsolete
Through use of Apple Wallet and Google Wallet, hotel chains are racing to ditch the plastic room key card.
Many hotel chains are racing to replace the plastic room key with digital options, including Apple Wallet and Google Wallet apps. Plastic hotel key cards have had a rough few years. During the pandemic, touch was taboo, so touchless trends accelerated. And cybersecurity concerns have mounted around hotel key technology. Earlier this year, researchers found a vulnerability in plastic hotel keys that could render up to three million keys easy prey for hackers and take years to fix.
Cybersecurity and safety issues have prompted many hotel chains to accelerate plans to transform hotel room door locks. While major U.S. chains have had the digital key capability for years, Google Wallet and Apple Wallet are jumping in by offering hotels the ability to save guests' room keys to their wallets, enabling them to access their rooms by simply tapping the back of their phones against a reader near the door handle.
Hilton Hotels has its Honors app, which allows guests to check in and use a room key through their smartphone. The 119-room Harpeth Hotel in Franklin, Tennessee, is a Hilton property, and guests can check in digitally and store keys in their Google or Apple wallet app.
"The benefit to the digital check-in is that your phone is the key," said Kimberly Elder, director of sales for the Harpeth Hotel, adding that many guests still prefer the plastic key cards.
Eli Fuchs, regional director of operations at Valor Hospitality Partners, which has Hilton and Holiday Inn Express hotels in its portfolio, says digital is the next wave in hotel room door technology.
"Traditional hotel room keys are staring down the end of their existence," Fuchs says.