Apple has collaborated with Hyatt in order to provide the hotel guests with the ability to store their room keys in their Apple Wallets.
According to the post on Hyatt’s newsroom, this feature allows you to use your Apple Watch or iPhone to unlock your room rather than using a physical key. The feature will also allow you to enter areas of the hotel that require a key to enter.
Digital Room Keys in Your iPhone Wallet
According to the collab, when Apple iPhone users stay in the hotel, they will not have to carry the keys with them all the time, rather they will be able to save the key directly into the Wallet App on their phone.
You can also use a paired Apple Watch to unlock the room. This feature is currently being supported by 6 Hyatt hotels in the US.
How to Use the Feature?
In order to use this feature, it is required that you must have iOS 15 installed on your device and WatchOS 8 should be installed on your Apple Watch.
Following is a list of the hotels participating in this collab:
- Hyatt Centric Key West Resort & Spa
- Andaz Maui at Wailea Resort
- Hyatt House Chicago/West Loop-Fulton Market
- Hyatt House Dallas/Richardson
- Hyatt Place Fremont/Silicon Valley
- Hyatt Regency Long Beach
In order to add a key to your iPhone Wallet for your stay in the Hyatt Hotels, go to your reservation confirmation in the World of Hyatt mobile app. Look for the “Add your room key to Apple Watch” button and tap it.
After doing that, your key will automatically get activated once your check-in process has been completed and verified. You also get the option to either check-in from the reception front desk in person or bypass the whole process with mobile check-in.
In practical use, the room keys feature in Wallet App proves to be much more functional than the mobile key function in the World of Hyatt app.
How is This Feature Useful?
If you have a big family, then you can store multiple keys in a single Wallet App. So there will be no need of carrying multiple keys and the fear of losing the keys will be gone too.
You can use your digital key remotely in such a way that if you want a late checkout or an extended stay then you can update your stay without going to the reception desk at the front.
The room key function works even when your iPhone is out of battery. You can tap your phone to unlock your room with the power reserve function in your device and you can use this feature for up to 5 hours without charging your iPhone.
Hyatt Hotels Corporation plans to increase the number of hotels this feature can support. Apple also claims that the timing and the location of your stay are neither shared with Apple nor stored on the company’s servers.
