20% Of Hyatts Now Live With Keyless Room Entry

Starwood publicly launched mobile check-in in November 2014. The idea of using your phone as a room key, after checking on through an app, can be a nice convenience especially for late night arrivals. You just want to get to your room and go to sleep, skipping any line at the front desk and extended chit chat.

It’s not for everyone. If you don’t stop at the desk you lose an opportunity to negotiate for an upgrade, and may not learn about a hotel’s elite benefits. The technology roll out for several chains doing this has been rocky. And it’s been a problem early on to get processes right,

  • It needs to work with more than one phone simultaneously if more than one guest is staying in a room.
  • Mobile check-in has to authorize credit cards. Marriott had a problem with this, and guests loading prepaid cards with low available funds were skipping out on bills (and the chain had to compensate hotels as a result).
  • And ultimately it just has to work.

Four years ago Hyatt started testing letting guests use their phone as a room key at the Grand Hyatt San Francisco and the Hyatt Regency Bellevue. Around the same time I had problems getting keyless to work at Starwood’s W Times Square.


Grand Hyatt San Francisco

Hyatt has been pretty quiet about the technology, though in the fall they did say that all of their properties would have it by 2020.

It turns out that 142 Hyatts are up and running with the functionality. That’s not impressive compared to the number of Marriott and Hilton properties live with this feature. However I had no idea they were this far along, since that’s around 20% of their hotel portfolio. It’s not something they’ve been talking up or promoting.

Even when you visit one of these hotels they may not tell you about it. For instance I was at the Andaz 5th Avenue in February and didn’t realize I could have done this. It’s a feature in the Hyatt mobile app, but I haven’t use their app (even as a top tier Hyatt elite) in years because it hasn’t offered me any value-added features.


Andaz 5th Avenue Breakfast

Here’s the current list of hotels, per Hyatt:

Hyatt Place St. Petersburg Hyatt Regency Riyadh Olaya Grand Hyatt San Francisco
Hyatt Regency Sydney Royal Palms Hotel Hyatt Regency Bellevue
Hyatt Place Athens Hyatt House Düsseldorf The Eliza Jane, New Orleans
Hyatt Paris Madeleine Hyatt Regency Atlanta Hyatt Regency Greenwich
Hyatt Place Biloxi Hyatt Place Delano Grand Hyatt DFW
Hyatt Regency Long Beach Hyatt Regency Lost Pines Hyatt House San Diego Sorrento Mesa
Grand Hyatt Melbourne Hyatt Regency O’Hare Hyatt Place San Pedro Sula
Hyatt Place Amsterdam Airport Hyatt Regency Lexington Kentucky Hyatt House Universal Orlando Resort
Shenzhen Yuanwei Hyatt Regency Andaz Savannah Hyatt Place Iowa City
Hyatt Centric Gran Via Madrid Hyatt Place Station Park/Farmington Hyatt Place Moab
Hyatt Place London Heathrow Hayes Hyatt Place State College Hyatt Place Provo
Hyatt Regency Vancouver Hyatt Regency Sarasota Hyatt Place Tampa Wesley Chapel
Hyatt Place Crocker Park Hyatt Market Street The Woodlands Hyatt Place Royal Oak
Hyatt Regency Westlake Grand Hyatt Xi’an Hyatt Place Greensboro Downtown
Andaz Maui at Wailea Resort Hyatt Place Essendon Field Hyatt Place Greenville Downtown
Hyatt Place Frankfurt Hyatt Regency Boston Harbor Hyatt Place Ocean City
Hyatt Centric Waikiki Andaz Napa Hyatt House Augusta / Downtown
Andaz Liverpool Street Hyatt Regency Phoenix Hyatt House Bryan / College Station
Hyatt Regency Etoile Porte Maillot Andaz New York 5th Avenue Hyatt House San Jose Airport
Hyatt Place Philadelphia/King of Prussia Hyatt Regency Tulsa Hyatt Place Austin / Cedar Park
Park Hyatt Beaver Creek Hyatt Regency Reston Hyatt Place Hampton Convention Center
Grand Hyatt Muscat Hyatt at the Bellevue Hyatt Place San Jose Airport
Hyatt Regency Tashkent Hyatt Regency Princeton Hyatt House East Moline
Hyatt Regency Paris Vendome Grand Hyatt Bogota Hyatt House Nashville
Hyatt Regency DFW Airport Hyatt Regency Crystal City Hyatt House Orlando
Hyatt Place Marlborough Hyatt Driskill Hotel Hyatt House Pleasant Grove
Hyatt Place Boise Hyatt Regency Clearwater Beach Resort Hyatt Place East Moline
Hyatt Regency Cleveland at The Arcade Hyatt Regency Monterey Hotel and Spa Hyatt Place Jacksonville
Hyatt Regency New Brunswick Hyatt at Olive 8 Hyatt Place Pasadena
Hyatt Regency Milwaukee Wisconsin Hyatt Regency San Antonio Hyatt Place San Francisco
Hyatt House Jersey City Grand Hyatt Seattle Hyatt Place Sandestin
Hyatt Regency Andares Guadalajara Hyatt Regency Orange County Hyatt Regency Bangkok Sukhumvit
Hyatt Centric Fisherman’s Wharf Hyatt Regency Greenville South Carolina Hyatt Place Calgary
Hyatt Place Atlanta/Buckhead Hyatt Regency Washington Capitol Hill Hyatt Centric Faneuil Hall Boston
Hyatt Regency Hua Hin & Barai Spa Hyatt Regency Coconut Point Resort Hyatt House San Jose/ Cupertino
Hyatt House Denver Lakewood Grand Hyatt San Antonio Texas Hyatt Place Florence/ Downtown
Hyatt Regency Xuzhou Hyatt Centric Brickell Miami Hyatt Place Santa Barbara
Hyatt Place Austin North Central Hyatt Regency Rochester Hyatt Regency Seattle
Hyatt Regency North Dallas Hyatt Regency Wuxi Hyatt Place Atlanta Airport-South
Hyatt Regency Baltimore Hyatt Place St. George Hyatt Regency Addis Ababa
Hyatt Place Columbus Mississippi Hyatt Regency Santa Clara Hyatt Regency Chantilly
Hyatt Regency Chesapeake Hyatt Regency Boston Hotel Sofia Barcelona
Hyatt Place Eugene / Oakway Hyatt Place Katy Texas Hyatt Centric San Isidro Lima
Hyatt Regency Savannah Hyatt Place Vintage Park Hyatt Place Changsha Meixihu
Park Hyatt Sanya Sunny Bay Resort Park Hyatt Chicago Hyatt House Indianapolis Downtown
Park Hyatt Buenos Aires Hyatt Place Sumter Hyatt Place Indianapolis Downtown
Park Hyatt Melbourne Andaz West Hollywood
Park Hyatt Ararat Moscow Park Hyatt Bangkok

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. Was at the Grand Hyatt in San Francisco recently where they were touting the keyless room entry. But…the Bluetooth key did not work in the elevator which, of course, required a plastic key to access your floor. In other words, there was literally no value to the keyless entry as you needed the plastic key anywhere. It seems a touch half-baked.

  2. I have to wonder how easily someone can steal the wireless key for the hotel rooms by the placement of a signal capture device near the room doors.

    I’ve seen reports of cars stolen by thieves exploiting the wireless capture of wireless/digital keys for some relatively high end cars.

  3. Nordic Choice hotels often give me a choice of getting a key in the mobile phone app and using that instead of a physical room key or in conjunction with such. But it requires putting in a request for the mobile phone key (on the app but maybe also otherwise) or the mobile phone key doesn’t get pushed out. There, if the loyalty program account credentials are swiped by somebody, then it’s easy for such party to get a room key without having to physically interact with any staff in person.

  4. In the hotels that I’ve used it in it does NOT work even though they say it does. I was just at the Hyatt Andares in Guadalajara, Mexico and although they said it worked it never did. They tried a few times but it was taking too long and I just gave up on it.

  5. Huh. I was just at the Hyatt Centric Waikiki and they made no mention of this too. Not a big deal, though, as I got a decent upgrade as an Explorist.

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