Another Cellphone Convenience, But I'll Pass

(NYT photo)

Early adopters may no longer need physical wallets, but it will be a long time coming before I get rid of mine. Inside the billfold are a half-dozen cards--California Real ID, credit, ATM, car insurance, Medicare, other medical--and, of course, cash. It's much easier to pull out the physical item, and not all vendor personnel are familiar with handling transactions via cellphone.

Credit cards have been around since the 1950's, and everyone's gotten used to swiping or inserting them into a reader. It was therefore an easy transition for hotels to get their guests to use plastic key cards to enter their rooms instead of traditional keys that could be lost, stolen, or duplicated.

But hotels are encountering stiff resistance to the next phase of key technology: using one's cellphone. The advantages of phone over card are straightforward:

Doling out fewer keycards saves hotels money, cuts down on plastic use, helps with staffing shortages and, when used properly, saves travelers time [e.g., bypassing the front desk during check-in]..

In the real world customers have found that the technology is not so seamless:

[Frequent traveler Jennifer] Puzziferro lists the challenges she’s run into: troubles getting the hotel room door open if a phone case is too thick; being locked out of a room after too many tries with a digital key; problems accessing the elevator; and, in one recent case in Denver, getting double billed for a room after checking in on the mobile app and requesting a digital key followed by a regular key.

On some occasions we have 2-4 guests in one room or suite. It's much easier to hand out the cards than download passes onto each person's cellphone. Besides, a cellphone key may be inconvenient to carry vs. a card, such as when one wants to run down to the hotel gym.

Key cards are convenient enough for your humble blogger, so I'll continue to stick with those as long as hotels give me a choice.