Oliver Haslam on January 26, 2022, 3:13 am

Someone Filmed Hayat Hotels Testing Out Apple’s Hotel Key Wallet Feature

When Apple released iOS 15 and watchOS 8 it added a new feature that allows people to add their hotel room keys to the Wallet app and then use an iPhone or Apple Watch to unlock them.

Unfortunately, the number of hotels that support the feature is insanely small right now, but someone went to one and filmed the whole thing.

As the folks at Appleosophy spotted, KTLA’s Rich DeMuro went to the Hyatt Regency in Long Beach to see what the deal with hotel room keys in the Wallet app is — and it’s as cool as you’re probably expecting it to be.

If you’ve ever tried using a hotel app as your digital room key, this is so much better. The key is now stored in Apple Wallet, which means there is no need to unlock your phone, open an app or activate a key before you want to use it.

With the digital keys feature enabled, a room key appears in the Wallet app and then all a person needs to do is touch their iPhone or Apple Watch to a reader mounted to the hotel room door. It works similarly to how Apple Pay Express Transit does, meaning that no authentication is required and the door will even unlock when the devices are powered down, too.

The whole thing seems to work well and we can only imagine it being a matter of time before more hotels support this feature. For now, it’s a total of six US-based Hyatt hotels, unfortunately.