How your room-access bracelet might become a tracking device - 0 views
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Since 2013, the travel industry has been replacing easy-to-lose room cards and cumbersome, old-fashioned keys with room-access wristbands.
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These wearable room keys can be worn in the shower, pool and ocean, and won’t get lost at the bottom of your bag or dropped on the ground. Some can even be connected to your hotel account and your credit cards, so you can seamlessly make purchases during your trip. But because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the uses for these bracelets and wristbands have evolved. Some are now capable of tracking your whereabouts.
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Room-access bracelets, which function with a radio frequency identification (RFID) chip, first made a splash in the tourism sector when Disney’s MagicBand appeared at the Florida theme parks in 2013. Taking the place of a visitor’s admittance ticket and FastPasses, MagicBands also allow parkgoers to make on-property purchases and enable keyless entry for resort guests.
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Wearables debuted on the open seas in 2014 when Royal Caribbean launched its Wow Bands. Three years later, Princess Cruises debuted its Ocean Medallion technology. This wireless gadget can be worn as a bracelet or discreet pendant necklace, and it enables contactless boarding, keyless stateroom entry and onboard payments for everything from drinks to purchases in shipboard shops.
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Now, instead of just making it possible to keep an eye on your kids while they’re having fun at a watery splash zone, these devices are now capable of keeping tabs on travelers who are quarantined due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. As part of Kauai’s so-called “enhanced movement quarantine,” six resorts on the Hawaiian island use a mobile app paired with a wearable surveillance device to ensure guests comply with a mandatory 72-hour quarantine upon arrival. Some properties provide the bracelets for free, while others charge guests up to $100.
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The British Virgin Islands also mandate that guests wear tracking bracelets. Arriving passengers, including residents and citizens, must take a COVID-19 test at the airport and use a contact-tracing system on their phones linked to a government-issued wristband during a four-day quarantine before being tested again. The two required tests, the mobile contact tracing app and monitoring bracelet are provided at the visitor’s expense, costing approximately $175.
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There are also environmental concerns. Most properties don’t reuse the bracelets. Chapur, of Le Blanc, said their beachfront resort uses plastic-free vinyl wristbands, but they still generate more waste than a keycard, which can be reprogrammed.
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With more travel providers (and entire nations) turning to wearable technology in an effort to curb the spread of COVID-19 amongst travelers, we’ll likely see new innovations in the wearable space. A single device could become your room key card, a quarantine monitor, theme park pass and mobile payment device. It could even use biotechnology to monitor your health, like the buttons deployed by the Cayman Islands to help travelers enjoy a reduced quarantine period. But hopefully, these wearable devices will become increasingly comfortable, eco-friendly and more discreet, so guests and travelers aren’t easily singled out — and aren’t deterred from using the technology in future applications.