by Matthew Keller

Created on: March 23, 2007   Last Updated: April 30, 2007

After working in the hospitality industry for nearly ten years now, I have noticed something that may need some attention. This is in regards to those little credit card size key cards we all get at hotels these days. These little cards make life as a hotel employee and as a hotel guest less cumbersome. Yet, these little cards have weaknesses and limitations.

An important fact to know is that these cards can be corrupted by any magnetic field. We all know that credit cards are susceptible to this corruption (think about the signs at the grocery store), but rarely do we think about these key cards. The problem is, these key cards are probably much more sensitive to these magnetic forces because they are designed to be encoded over and over. The point is, even a small magnetic force can possibly erase these keys. Cell phone batteries emit a slight magnetic force that is capable of erasing these key cards. Even other credit cards may have the ability to do so. While traveling, do not place your key card in the same pocket as your cell phone or directly next to another credit card. This will simply save you time from going through the trouble of getting a new card at the front desk. And when the occasion occurs that you key card does get erased somehow, it serves little purpose to get angry at the front desk person. Unless you witnessed them trailing you with a high-powered magnet, simply understand that sometimes technology doesn't always work perfectly.

There have been rumors floating around that all your personal information in regards to your hotel folio is encoded on those same key cards. Now, I cannot say for certain that this is false, but I can say from experience that this is probably not the practice of most hotels. Think about the liability the hotel would be opening themselves up to, considering how often these cards are lost. Lost keys is the main reason they use these very inexpensive, replaceable key cards. At the hotels I have worked at, the information that is on the card is all useless to anybody besides the hotel staff. It holds the room number and the date it expires, a code for the person who made the card, and the number of cards made...that's it. There is no credit card information or even a name imprinted on the card. Like I said, I don't know about every hotel, but it seems unlikely that many would encode any other information on these cards. For the doubters out there, ask yourself what purpose would be served to have this information available on the key card? When you analyze the logic, it simply does not make much sense.

Just some advice and information on something we probably give very little thought to.

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