My Dubai hotel experience shows not everything has checked into the digital world

Many of us instinctively believe that the battle between the physical and digital worlds is an asymmetrical contest. Our habits and actions have shown an unstoppable momentum in one direction for years now. Our daily driving is aided by navigation apps rather than physical maps. Our phones are full of digital images that are unlikely to ever be printed and put in an album. Our retail experiences are punctuated by digital transactions rather than handing over cash to a merchant. Biometrics and digital fulfilment illuminate the road to today and tomorrow. One US academic, Jay Zagorsky, this week made the alternative case to The National for cash over card or paperless transactions, and while he is not entirely a lone voice, the reality is that people are less and less likely to choose or use physical over digital to pay for bills or services. How much cash do you hold in your wallet right now, if you even have a physical wallet any more? Times, tastes and habits have changed, which also explains the presence of dozens of apps on your phone. Even so, there are still occasions when you may bump up against pockets of stasis in the physical-digital world. Take the following story, for instance. At the start of the long holiday last weekend, I drove from Abu Dhabi to Dubai and was about to check in to a hotel for a couple of nights. I realised that I didn’t have my physical Emirates ID card with me when I got there, but not to worry (or so I thought), because my fully charged smartphone had UAE Pass installed on it, as well as the Federal Authority for Identity and Citizenship application. UAE Pass is a national joint government initiative that seeks to deliver a trusted digital identity and stores secure official PDFs of a resident’s or citizen’s identification card, as well as enabling time-coded QR Code verification. The ICP app, accessible through a UAE Pass log in, also houses secure and official copies of your residence visa and identity card. They are both unquestionable proof of a person’s identity and residence status and backed by official infrastructure. Neither app proved acceptable to the hotel, however, whose staff insisted that by law they could only check guests in if they are able to present their physical documents, either a passport or Emirates ID. When I advised the hotel that I had stayed at other locations within their group in the UAE, who surely could check my digital documents against what they held on file, they insisted, once again, that only physical documents would do. We reached an impasse after several minutes of discussion in which I failed to plead the case for acceptance of digital proof. When the hotel confirmed it was both unwilling to check me in and unable to refund the money for my currently no-night stay, I got back in my car and drove down to Abu Dhabi to retrieve my errant ID card. A little under three hours later, having completed another 250km of driving in the hours before midnight, I returned to the hotel with my physical ID card in hand and wearily completed the check-in process. For their part, the hotel says they are obliged by the law to collect physical ID cards of their guests. While they accepted that other places may accept digital identification, they insisted that they would be ignoring their legal responsibilities if they were to do so. A pre-stay email also advised me that physical ID was required to complete check-in. Anecdotally, however, many of us may have shown digital copies of our ID to other entities around the country – and had them accepted – when requested. But it was in the strange grey hinterland of the real-world that I lost my bearings. Compare this insistence on physical over digital proof to the mid-pandemic period only a couple of years ago, when many UAE residents were required to use the official Al Hosn app to gain entry to public places – such as malls, supermarkets, restaurants and hotels. The app provided a three-colour status system – green, grey or red – to provide an easy-to-follow stop-or-go system that used a live QR code to present an individual’s vaccination and PCR test status updates. Al Hosn app was both a key part of pandemic response and provided a definitive confirmation of identity in one digital resource. Another example shows a similar destination point for how we will eventually prove our identity in the future in a secure way. Abu Dhabi’s now year-old Terminal A at Zayed International Airport is at the cutting edge of biometric smart travel and aims to eliminate the need for physical travel documents as well as substantially reduce the time it takes to move each passenger through the check-in and onboarding process. For now, though, I am reminded to keep a foot in both the physical and digital worlds, most especially when embarking on a field trip. I may be living in a double wallet world for a while.