Swipe cards for hotel rooms - Security issues
Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2006-11-23 06:55:37 - Graham EllisWe're using swipe cards for room access at Well House Manor - it allows us to give our guests a single key that gives them access to their room, the front door, and the conference rooms if appropriate. And as they're time limited, it allows our guests to be reassured that a previous guest who failed to return his or her key cannot return and get back in the room ... also good news for us as proprietors as we don't have a security headache with lots of keys out there. And cards that are NOT printed with room numbers, addresses, etc, also pose less of a problem even when "in date" if they get dropped or mislaid.
But I've learnt of a story - an urban myth - concerning these cards. It was said that some hotels put credit card details on them. And indeed it turned out that it wasn't always an urban myth - a few hotels (NOT us) were caught doing it. But, hey, the blank cards are cheap. We do like to reuse them but if you're concerned you're welcome to take them with you. Perhaps we should add an advert on them?
At the moment, our room cards are themed with the pictures in each individual room, and guests will have seen them in use from the first day. We've now added card holders with a note of our contact numbers if you need to phone back in, and our 24 page room information folder (our "FAQ") is available.Added - July 2010
Q. via page - /mouth/939_Swipe-cards-for-hotel-rooms-Security-issues.html
what to do when the computer didn`t abale to encode the reservation and the room will be given to other guest?
A.I'm not sure if I understand the question
... but ...
If we want to cancel a key that's already been made, and we don't have the original key, we can encode a new card to replace the old one in such a way that the first time the new card is used in a lock old one ceases to be valid. We then use the new key ourselves (in each lock effected) to test it / invalidate the old one. Simples.