Many hotel chains are racing to interchange the plastic room key with digital options, including Apple Wallet and Google Wallet apps. Plastic hotel key cards have had a rough few years. Throughout the pandemic, touch was taboo, so touchless trends accelerated. And cybersecurity concerns have mounted around hotel key technology. Earlier this 12 months, researchers found a vulnerability in plastic hotel keys that would render up to a few million keys easy prey for hackers and take years to repair.
Cybersecurity and questions of safety have prompted many hotel chains to speed up plans to rework 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 power to avoid wasting 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 ascertain 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 of their Google or Apple wallet app.
“The profit to the digital check-in is that your phone is the important thing,” 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 subsequent wave in hotel room door technology.
“Traditional hotel room keys are staring down the tip of their existence,” Fuchs says.
Nonetheless, some security experts caution that even the newer lock methods aren’t foolproof.
“Keyless systems can introduce entirely latest threat vectors for hotel security operations to administer,” said Lee Clark, cyber threat intelligence production manager at Retail and Hospitality Information Sharing and Evaluation Center (RH-ISAC).
While Clark says these threats will be mitigated through security control policies and configurations, resembling multifactor authentication (MFA), these introduce extra steps that harried guests may not all the time wish to jump through.
Clark says it’s unlikely that every one 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 private device compatible with digital lock systems, together with the expense.
“Transitioning to digital and keyless lock systems carries a major cost in equipment, installation, maintenance, and security,” Clark said.
Hotel chains begin to require digital key systems
And human habits keep getting in the best way, too.
For example, 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.
In response to J.D. Power data, amongst guests who’ve the app for the hotel company/brand, 30% use a digital key, and 70% use a plastic card more often than not.
Then again, many hotels simply have not installed locks able to digital entry.
“Several large hotel chains, whose apps are most definitely to support digital keys, are starting to require that hotel franchise owner to put in latest door locks as a part of updated brand standards,” said Andrea Stokes, hospitality practice lead at J.D. Power.
Despite the slow adoption of digital options by customers, J.D. Power data does show that keyless customers feel safer than those using plastic cards.
“Guests using ‘digital key’ provide significantly more positive rankings for safety of the hotel in comparison with those that didn’t use digital keys,” Stokes said.
Chad Spensky, CEO of Allthenticate, which develops smartphone access capability and credential management, compares the plastic key card to passwords, which cybersecurity specialists view as low-tech and dated.
“All of us still use passwords, despite the glaring security holes and clunky user experience. In the identical way, key cards are likely here to remain,” Spensky said.
He says the actual promise of digital cards is less about security and more about convenience.
“While the cardboard implementations aren’t any safer than their plastic counterparts, their user experience is much superior,” Spensky said. If given a selection between shuffling around a bunch of plastic cards or having your smartphone, “the phone is a transparent winner.”
The patron convenience factor is pushing hotel chains forward of their quest for digital keys. While digital keys offer an extra attack surface, additionally they allow for quick course correction.
One among the largest problems with keycards, Spensky says, is that when a vulnerability is discovered there isn’t any easy approach to patch the vulnerability, “With smartphones patches will be pushed out almost immediately over the air,” he said.
Don’t count out the plastic key card yet
Mehmet Erdem, professor, and chair of the department of resort, gaming, and golf management on the University of Las Vegas’s William F. Harrah College of Hospitality, warns that no system is foolproof and that folks shouldn’t let digital entry give them a false sense of security.
“The whole lot will be hacked, all the things will be breached,” Erdem said. “If someone has the intention to hack, it can occur.”
Erdem says to not count the plastic key card out yet. There are magnetic key cards that require a swipe and the newer radio frequency identification (RFID) cards that simply require proximity or will be loaded onto a phone. Erdem says RFID technology is improving, which makes plastic keys more versatile.
“RFID is just not outdated,” Erdem said, adding that it allows individuals who want less interaction to download the app, get the important thing, activate it, and go to the room.
“Due to sustainability and value, hotels will push for mobile app,” Erdem said, but he added that some people will all the time prefer the physical plastic key. The advantage of the digital version of a plastic key, he said, comes all the way down to human nature. “People forget their wallets, people forget their ID, but they remember their phone.”
But in Las Vegas, where people routinely head to their hotel rooms flush with winnings from the blackjack tables and slots, there’s an old-fashioned, low-tech option that makes the door discussion moot.
“There’s all the time the secure within the room, the guests should use that in the event that they have something very invaluable,” Erdem said.
