Ah… It’s good to see that in other parts of the country technology is actually progressing. The main thing that is holding back my old employers on these newer systems was the expense of the newer cards. The mag cards we used were only about $1 apiece. As I recall, we were going through about 50 cards a month, only $600 a year. These newer cards, which cost around $12 apiece, would cost them about $6600 more.
Of course we are talking about a Fortune 500 company. I doubt that an extra 7Gs is going to put them under.
The Wall Street Journal ran a story about this a few years ago. Turns out that if the battery goes dead… you are locked out until security come up and puts a new one in.
Also. IIRC the lock was programed such that it looked for valid keys in sequence. ie. I check in, my my mag strip is coded 1234, then the next day you check into the same room you would get 1235. This “next” in the sequence code would prevent my card from opening the door. The “smarts” are self contained in the lock.