Why do the small hotels in Paris (we stayed at the Muguet and the Leveque) require you to leave your room key every time you leave? We sometimes had to wait quite a while to get it back upon returning because the desk clerk was busy. Also, the desk personnel sometimes seemed annoyed when we left only to come back a short while later.

That's just how it is. Our hotels also required us to leave our keys. It's really for your safety as well, don't you think?

For our safety? How so? I actually hated the concept of leaving our keys. They were just hanging on a board, telling anyone who walked in that we weren't in our room. When we came in, we just asked for "room 31"... the desk person was sometimes someone we hadn't seen before, and they just handed over the key. Next trip, I'm hanging on to my own room key.

Right--Thats just the way it is!Especially the small hotels,anywhere other than the US.It is assumed that when you leave the hotel, you are gone for the day.And when you come back in the afternoon,it is expected that you are there for the evening.When in Rome, do as the Romans.

It is the custom to leave your room key in Europe. If you make a repeated habit of taking it, there will be repercussions. I walked out of a hotel in France with my room key, and the coincierge just about chased me down the street. He did yell at me to leave the key as I was headed out the door.<BR>I got the message. (This fellow spoke English like an American lawyer, which he is: JD from UCLA.)<BR>

They used to do it that way in the US mare. <BR>I like it, I never have to worry about where did I put the key. We also have never had a problem with getting the key right away-next time, whatever the desk clerk is doing , wait a minute then just ask for your key! And obviously if they are taking the resonsibility of keeping the keys, they are not irritated when you ask for them. That is what they do all day.

There are a couple reasons for this -- one is security, there is less chance you are going to lose the key or get it stolen. The second is so the hotel knows when you are in the room or not, which facilitates service, cleaning, etc. <BR><BR>I think it's a perfectly decent and reasonable system. I especially like it when the key is large as I don't want to carry it around all day. <BR><BR>Your complaints should be directed towards the apparently lax and rude service personnel and these budget hotels you mention, rather than the custom. I have never had a problem getting it back immediately or being treatly with annoyance about the issue at any hotel I've stayed at.

Totally agree, Christina!! Leaving the key makes so much sense. And it gives us neophytes a chance to practice our french we hand it over and ask for its return. Just a win-win!! Have a good Thanksgiving, C, and I appreciate all of your really excellent information on this board. Keep it coming!!!

I don't know about it being the &quot;custom in Europe.&quot;<BR><BR>I've stayed in London, the Channel Islands, Salsberg and Vienna and never been asked to leave my key.<BR><BR> Keith

I accept that it is a different custom in at least some Euro countries, so I follow along and leave my key when they ask.<BR><BR>But I like carrying my own key, thank you very much. I don't see, as xxx so snottily put it, that the practice is for &quot;my&quot; safety.<BR><BR>It is a trivial issue in most respects, but I would much rather take responsibility for my own key than be treated like a five-year old who has to depend on mom and dad to let him into his room.

Keith, I'm surprised. I have always been asked to leave keys at hotels in all those cities (except the Channel Islands, which I have yet to visit).<BR><BR>I too am a little bothered that not only is your key on display and could easily be retrieved by someone else, but even worse, this summer I encountered a couple of hotels where the board was very exposed and we were actually told by the staff to just take our key if no one was there. We could have taken our choice of keys and robbed as many rooms as we wanted.

Thanks for your interesting responses. I have to say I'm with the posters who felt a little uneasy--it seemed as though anyone could have asked for the key to our room. We had never encountered this custom when traveling any place in Europe other than Paris. We didn't &quot;fight the custom&quot; but were curious about the reasoning behind it.

I agree with Christina, for a hotel it is wonderful to know when the room is empty to clean it without bothering the guest. The best way is to know that the key is at the front desk.<BR>A good hotel, big or small takes good care of the keys.<BR>I read once a report on US big hotels and how someone asked for a second card for a room, and got it.<BR>So nothing is totally secure.<BR>I guess it is typically of the ugly American concept to visit a place and try to impose the American way. As someon rightly said when in Rome...

Graziella<BR><BR>Where did you get the ugly american garbage? No one on this thread advocated imposing American standards anywhere. The original post was more curious about the reasons for the custom. Others of us prefer to keep our keys while others don't.<BR><BR>So why do you try to escalate a reasonable discussion to trollbait like tossing out the old ugly American epithet? It isn't very gracious, to say the least.

Graziella, look up the expression &quot;sour grapes&quot;

In the Hotel D'Angleterre in Paris, the room key is far out of reach and only the man at the desk will give it to you. They are large and heavy, they look like small bells. It would be very inconvenient to carry them and I am happy to not have to think about losing a room key.<BR>Doesn't anyone remember (either in their own lives or from movies) when really elegant hotels would keep the keys and you would ask for them? or was that only in the movies<BR>I guess if you are not used to it, you would get a little worried, but as many times as I have stayed in hotels where they keep the key, I have never had a problem. I guess they don't either, or they might change their way of doing things.<BR>

My experience has been that I left the key at the front desk of hotels in Vienna. I have stayed at two different hotels in Vienna, der Altwienerhof and the Carlton Opera. At both places I was expected to turn in the key when I left.<BR>One night we went to an opera and because it would run late, the owner of the Altwienerhof, Frau Keller, told us to take the key with us because the front door might be locked when we got back.<BR><BR>The same policy involving keys was true of the Hotel Astoria in Munich and a guest house where we stayed in Heiligenblut. The Astoria made it obvious because the keys win pigeon holes behind the front desk. The guesthouse in Heiligenblut had a peg board with hooks on it for the room keys. <BR><BR>In Salzburg, at the Goldener Hirsch, the keys were on key fobs so big that you could not have possibly gotten it in your pocket. Perhaps you could get away with it at the Golden Duck in Salzburg because the front desk was also the bar, and they were so busy they would never notice.<BR><BR>I also stayed at a hotel in London just off of Picadilly Circus. I turned in the key. In fact that was when I learned that the American letter Z is not a Z in Britain; it is zed. My room number started with a Z, and I was corrected by the old geezer handing out the keys that &quot;Sir, do you mean ZED 123? We have no Z sound in English.&quot;<BR>(His tone was like that of the head usher at St. Martin's Theater when the Mousetrap played there. Some joker, American, showed up at 8 PM for the matinee. He told the guy that he thought &quot;First Performance&quot; on the ticket meant the first performance of the play. The head usher fixed him with a dignified, but penetrating, stare and intoned in the voice of doom, &quot;Sir, the Mousetrap has run consecutively for 40 years. It was hardly the premier performance.&quot; (Or whatever the number was at that time.)<BR>I took it with me when I lived in an

First of all you wouldn't appreciate carrying a key with a large keychain attachment such as the Hotel de l'Angleterre's. As Kate mentions it's bell shape and quite bulky. Other hotels' keys are just as large &amp; bulky as well. It's so people don't get encouraged to take them out of the hotel.<BR><BR>It's the custom and if it bothers you then say something to the management, stay at large expensive impersonal hotel chains, or just don't stay in those cities that practice this custom.