You can now use Apple Wallet on your iPhone and Apple Watch to unlock your Hyatt hotel room door

Hyatt Apple Watch Wallet (Image credit: Hyatt)

What you need to know

Hyatt has announced support for room keys in the Wallet app.
People can use their Apple Watch and iPhone to unlock rooms.
Six U.S. hotels including those in Hawaii, Key West, Chicago, Dallas, Silicon Valley, and Long Beach are online.

Hyatt has announced that it now supports Apple Wallet for unlocking room doors in its hotels, allowing people to use their Apple Watch and iPhone rather than a traditional room key or card. Right now the feature is only available at six U.S. hotels — "Andaz Maui at Wailea Resort, Hyatt Centric Key West Resort & Spa, Hyatt House Chicago/West Loop-Fulton Market, Hyatt House Dallas/Richardson, Hyatt Place Fremont/Silicon Valley and Hyatt Regency Long Beach." More will come online in time.

Hyatt made the announcement via press release, saying that the company has been "listening to our guests and members," with the result being a new way to gain entry into rooms.

The hotel also notes that people don't need to unlock their device to use the key, nor do they need to even have it powered on thanks to Express Mode.

Simply Tap iPhone or Apple Watch to Unlock: Room keys in Apple Wallet give World of Hyatt guests easy and secure access to their room and common areas around the hotel such as the gym, spa, pool and more, with a simple tap of their iPhone running iOS 15 or Apple Watch running watchOS 8. Once a room key is added to Apple Wallet on iPhone or Apple Watch, guests can hold their device near the door's NFC-enabled lock to access key card-protected areas. With Express Mode, guests don't need to unlock their device to use their room key in Apple Wallet. If their iPhone needs to be charged, they can still use the device to unlock their room or common areas for up to five hours with automatic Power Reserve.

Unlocking rooms could be one of the best iPhone and Apple Watch features that a ton of people never get to try, but it's great to see it becoming available for those who do get to try it out. Similar to Apple Pay Express Transit, this seems to be a feature that could prove transformative for those who have a cauase to use it.

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too.

Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.