Hotel Key Cards

Hotel key cards are a consumable. Guests take them home, lose them, demagnetize them and leave them in rental cars, so a property goes through far more keys than it has rooms. We supply RFID and magnetic stripe room keys in stock packs and as custom-printed runs with your property's artwork. Your front desk encoder writes each key at check-in; our job is to supply the cards that encoder and your locks expect. For the wider picture of cards in hospitality, including staff badges, see our hospitality industry page.

Your locks decide the card

A room key only has to do one thing: work in your locks. Everything else follows from that. There are two kinds of room key in common use.

• RFID keys carry a contactless chip, and guests tap them on the lock. The chip type has to match what the lock reads. MIFARE Classic 1K is the chip we supply, and it is widely used in hotel locks. Our NFC cards page explains the chip families.
• Magnetic stripe keys are swiped or inserted. Hotel encoders almost always write low-coercivity (LoCo) stripes, and high-coercivity (HiCo) cards generally will not work in them, so hotel stripe keys should be LoCo. Our magnetic stripe cards page explains the difference.

Lock systems vary, and so do the cards different systems accept, even from the same manufacturer. Your lock vendor's documentation is the final word on what your locks read. If it is not to hand, the next section shows a quick way to check.

How to check what your keys are

For RFID keys, a phone can usually tell you. Free NFC reader apps, including NXP's own TagInfo, identify the chip when you hold a current room key against the back of the phone.

• If the app reports MIFARE Classic 1K, that is the card we supply.
• If it reports another chip, send us the name it shows and we will quote it.
• If it shows nothing, your keys are probably magnetic stripe or a different frequency, and you will need your lock vendor's specification.

For magnetic stripe keys, assume LoCo unless your encoder's documentation says otherwise. It is what hotel systems are almost always set up for.

We cannot test keys against your locks, because we do not have hotel lock encoders. Checking a current key, then confirming with your lock vendor if you are unsure, is the reliable route, and it takes a few minutes before an order rather than a return afterward.

Stock keys, ready to ship

For properties that do not need their own artwork, we stock keys with a printed "Welcome" front and tap or swipe instructions on the back.

• RFID keys in packs of 200, 500 and 1,000, at 13.56 MHz.
• LoCo magnetic stripe keys in packs of 500 and 1,000.

Every listing names the lock systems it is sold for. Treat that as a starting point and confirm with your own keys or your lock vendor, as above.

Custom-printed keys with your artwork

A room key is in every guest's hand from check-in to check-out, which makes it one of the cheapest places a property has to show its brand. Custom runs start at 500 keys.

A custom key can carry your logo and artwork on the front, with check-out instructions, Wi-Fi details, or a note about your restaurant or spa on the back. You supply the finished artwork, and we handle production on the chip or stripe your locks need. Lead times depend on the card and the finish, so we confirm them on the quote. Our custom plastic cards page walks through how a run is ordered, and our post on how hotel key cards work explains encoding and why keys stop working.

Plan custom orders around changes you can see coming. A rebrand, a new logo or a change of ownership makes a shelf of old keys useless overnight, so order smaller ahead of a known change and larger once the artwork is settled.

How many keys to order

Most properties underestimate this, because keys leave with guests and nobody counts them going out the door.

The simplest way to size an order is to track how many keys the front desk encodes in a typical month for a quarter, then order several months ahead of that rate. Order more ahead of your busy season, and keep enough in reserve that a late delivery never leaves the desk short. Stock keys are a quick reorder; custom keys take longer, so they need more headroom.

A key collection box at the front desk and in the lobby brings a share of them back. Returned keys can usually be encoded again for the next guest.

Also for hotels

• Staff ID badges. Front desk, housekeeping and maintenance badges are a separate program from guest keys. Our ID card printing service prints them from your staff list, or you can print them in house on a card printer.
• Back-of-house access. If your offices and storerooms use HID prox or iCLASS cards, we program those through our access card programming service.
• Anywhere in the country. We are in Woodridge, Illinois, and ship keys nationwide, so a property in downtown Chicago or the Wisconsin Dells orders the same way.