Keys and Hotel Security

Abstract

Locks and keys have been around since at least 2,000 B.C., but inns and taverns in the United States and elsewhere rarely used them until around the mid-1 820s. Then, advances in lever-lock systems and, ultimately, Linus Yale's invention in 1840 of the modern cylinder lock made guest-room security using locks and keys practical and affordable and, in the eyes of guests, nonnegotiable. At the same time, the rise of hotel burglaries-especially in the second half of the 19th century-made locks and security increasingly necessary. By the early 1900s innkeepers had hit on the idea of using key tags as advertising mechanisms, and before long a vast array of creative, practical, and exotic key tags were leaving their marketing impressions on travelers. At the very least, in the United States a key tag allowed the forgetful guest who carried a hotel key home to drop the key in the nearest mailbox for safe and postage-paid transit back to the hotel. (In Europe, key tags often were so large and cumbersome that a guest couldn't possibly walk out of the hotel with it by accident.) Ultimately, however, the industry recognized that even the simplest hotel identifier posed some security risk to the person bearing the key, and many hotels dropped that practice altogether. Finally, along came affordable computer technology and programmable key cards, which today are used in most large and brand-name lodging properties. A collection of keys from different eras and properties is on display in Mineola, New York, at the headquarters of Hospitality Valuation Services.