Giving Out Replacement Hotel Keys
It’s a tough security trade-off. Guests lose their hotel room keys, and the hotel staff needs to be accommodating. But at the same time, they can’t be giving out hotel room keys to anyone claiming to have lost one. Generally, hotels ask to see some ID before giving out a replacement key and, if the guest doesn’t have his wallet with him, have someone walk to the room with the key and check their ID.
This normally works pretty well, but there’s a court case in Brisbane right now about a hotel giving a room key to someone who ended up sexually attacking the woman who had rented the room.
In civil action launched yesterday, the woman alleges the man was given the spare access key to her room by a hotel staffer.
The article doesn’t say what kind of authentication the hotel requested or received.
t3knomanser • November 13, 2008 12:47 PM
Um, we apparently don’t stay at the same hotels. Mind you, I’ve never LOST a key, but I’ve walked up to the counter with a dead magstrip and gotten a new key simply by stating a room number. They never have actually checked to see if I was a guest, or if that was my room.
This is part of the reason I travel very light- the only real valuable thing is my personal laptop.