Apple and Google wallets want to make hotel room key card obsolete

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.

However, some security experts caution that even the newer lock methods aren’t foolproof.

“Keyless systems can introduce entirely new threat vectors for hotel security operations to manage,” said Lee Clark, cyber threat intelligence production manager at Retail and Hospitality Information Sharing and Analysis Center (RH-ISAC).

While Clark says these threats can be mitigated through security control policies and configurations, such as multifactor authentication (MFA), these introduce extra steps that harried guests may not always want to jump through.

Clark says it’s unlikely that all hotels will replace all key cards with digital keys any time soon because some guests may prefer a key card or may not have a personal device compatible with digital lock systems, along with the expense.

“Transitioning to digital and keyless lock systems carries a significant cost in equipment, installation, maintenance, and security,” Clark said.

Hotel chains begin to require digital key systems

And human habits keep getting in the way, too.

For instance,  data from J.D. Power’s research on hotels found that only 14% of total branded hotel guests used digital keys during their hotel stay. Even guests who downloaded the brand’s app to their phones used the plastic key card.

According to J.D. Power data, among guests who have the app…