The deadbolt doesn't do anything with this, for what it's worth. The deadbolt on Onity locks is software-controlled; that is, there's a privacy switch that's triggered when you throw the deadbolt, and it checks the value of that when you put in a card. If you use a card with the 'privacy override' flag, or you use the Portable Programmer (or my opening device), the lock opens regardless of whether or not you use the deadbolt, as it's disengaged by the lock mechanism when you turn the handle.
I think he is referring to a manually operated dead bolt or those latches at the top of the door. The locks that can only be set and unset from inside of the room.
Latches will work, but 99.9% of doors with Onity locks will only have the deadbolt inside the Onity lock, which is vulnerable to the problem I detailed above. Just something to keep in mind.
No no you're missing the point I think. Nearly every hotel room has a big old manual separate bolt set up higher and away from key based locking system. Slides open maybe 2 inches etc. Twice in my life the hotel person has given my room to someone else by mistake (I travel a lot for work). That is, I'll be in there, twice late at night, and someone else puts in a key and it works. After the first time I always set that manual bolt no matter what - just in case. Not that I think there's any real merit to the original point that kicked off this particular thread.
Does anyone actually assume hotels are secure (in a sense other than good faith) though? There are so many points for allocation errors on the cards themselves, dozens of "all-access" cards available to both internal and contracted staff, and different people in every room most nights (e.g. no neighbour familiarity about an issue).
Few people assume hotels are truly secure, but generally when something goes wrong, you have an accurate audit trail. That is, if someone breaks into room 413 using a legitimate card, I can go back and say "ok, Michael was the one who encoded this card for him, after the guest had already checked in". You can't do that with the opening device.
