If you're traveling this holiday season and wondering what to do with that old hotel key still in your wallet when you get home, you might want to hang on to it. Turns out, you can use any NFC tag — even a plastic hotel key — to trigger iPhone automations. And with a little help from apps like ChatGPT and Gemini, that hack goes from clever to genuinely useful.
I set up my hotel key card to launch my go-to AI assistant when I tap it to the back of my phone. It may sound complicated, but it’s surprisingly simple — and I’m already using it to journal, brainstorm ideas and trigger custom “focus” routines. Here’s how I set it up and why you might want to do the same.
