Why Hotel Rooms Are Often Described As "Keys" (No, It's Not Douchey, I Swear)

I figured out why you were doing it but sometimes a new phrase just grates on the ears. I remember when TPG tried to make "pod" a thing for business class lie flat seats/suites and it was similarly annoying

Agree on your take here, Ben. A commonly used synonym (for lack of a better term) for “keys” is “total rooms” which is more verbose than it needs to be.

any professional/institution buying or investing in any hotel uses "keys" as the lingo, for sure.

In an apartment building, it would be “units”. That’s pretty non-descriptive, too, but it is a term that’s perhaps more familiar to the general public. “Keys” is a hotel industry term that serves them by obfuscating the fact that these are just tiny apartments rented at exorbitant rates by the night. I say ditch “keys” in your reporting.

It’s not a new phrase to anyone in hospitality. What is it grating other than because it appears to be new to you?

@Ben knows best.

The term is accurate, dont dumb down the blog for the Glenns.

I concur

Ditch the keys. Call them rooms.

I vote for "units," even if the concept of "keys" has ben clarified, and it's quite logical.
The word I'd like to banish forever, or at least for a long time, is "elevate." It's being thrown around on this blog and elsewhere with careless abandon

I know what the term means, but I still find "key" to refer to a room (or other type of accommodation) confusing. If I share a room with someone and each of us gets a key, that's two keys. Are both of those keys included in the "key" count? Well, no, they're not, so why are we pretending to count keys when we're really counting rooms?

I would just refer to the number of rooms. If it's necessary to distinguish between "rooms," "suites," and "villas," that can be done as needed.

On the 0-10 OMAAT Official Douchiness scale, with 0 (least) being Winston and 10 being (of course) Tiny Timmy D…I give it a 1.5, no big deal.

Well the thing is, Tom, that most of us aren't in hospitality. Terms take a while to trickle from industry jargon into the mainstream. I've been reading this blog (and others like it) every day for 10+ years and I never heard anyone say 'keys' to describe a room count until <a year ago.

I say keep Keys as its purpose is to talk about how many units of accomodation, if the there are ten rooms of which 3 are two bedroom suites and 1 a 3 bedroom suite, is that 10 rooms or 15 rooms? If you're calling it rooms is it 10 bedrooms or if you call it rooms are you also counting the bathrooms?

Maybe I'm too detail oriented

I also get the concept of key, but I would prefer to say it’s “a 200-room hotel with 120-standard rooms, 60 suites, and 20 villas.” It makes your articles sound more like regurgitated hotel pitch pieces when you say keys. And if I wanted that, I’d go to TPG.

For the people (including Lucky) saying it’s confusing to say room, how are you not baffled when you book a superior room and get upgraded to a deluxe room? Or do you manage to wrap your heads around that?

Let me see if I got this right: this travel and hospitality blogger uses the correct and widely used term that some readers are not familiar with. Instead of saying “great, I’ve learned something new today”, they complain because things are not clear enough to them. Oy….

Naw dog, it's super douchey. It's "rooms"

Exactly this. Don’t really understand how people even complain about this, it feels like such a non-issue in the grand scheme of things. It’s an accurate term and does it really matter in the end as long as people know what Ben means?

Ben repeatedly apologizing for saying the correct term is peak insanity to me (as in: he shouldn’t have to). If anything I’m here to be educated on the travel industry, so please don’t dumb it down.

Ditch the Eskimo. Call them fakes.

Makes zero sense whatsoever as most of the time I get two keys for my room mate.

You're really in the wrong here

Holy F***

The next revolt will be suitcase?
Cause most you dumb down people sure don't pack suits in a case anymore.

Maybe next time you fly at check in you call it laundry package or gift container?

Makes zero sense whatsoever as most of the time if you make millions of copy of the same Dollar bill in your wallet. You'd be an instant millionaire?

You're really in the wrong here

I work in commercial Real Estate and I can confirm we all refer to the amount of total rooms as ‘keys’ when marketing a hotel for sale to buyers.

And these dumb people don't realize the time money and lives lost because of converting imperial into metric.

They still want a new unit?
Sure because spoons cups foot stick and stone is much better less confusing and more accurate because that's the container it's in, rooms.

Every one slightly related to the industry knows that.

But then you have the general public who thinks they know better than the experts and professionals.

But you can't blame them.
They voted, and the world got 47.

Good that you get the concept.

Next time when you go house hunting, how are you not baffled when you see a "half" bathroom? How can a bathroom be half. Isn't it a bathroom or it isn't?
Or do you manage to wrap your heads around that?

It's the clearing confusion, industry standard because of that reason.

Calling units isn't democracy.

And look at what democracy got us, twice.

Apartments don't come with hotel service, nor are they usually rented out by night (until Airbnb came along, but those prices are hardly reasonable these days either). Don't know why everyone's so hard on such a non-issue.

Pretty sure it refers to unique keys (and philosophically, the number of different groups of travellers it can accommodate at max). Rooms are just incorrect, and having to specifically list out all categories in all instances is just not efficient.

I'm not even in the industry and it was always abundantly clear why a hotel would refer to the number of marketable units as keys rather than rooms.

Why are people just offended at everything these days?

Just because you are ignorant, doesn't make you center of the world.

What if you're given two keys at check-in? Wouldn't the accurate term be "locker" then?

I think everyone but pointless sticklers know that when anyone says "room" you mean the number of rentable units. No one is counting up individual rooms within suites, etc. Except to make any pointless point about it (or else for some extremely technical discussion issue). So use whatever term, it doesn't really matter.
If it's a term of art in the industry, fine. Just like I don't get why restaurant people call a table a "4-top" rather than a 4-seater. It's just what they do and it doesn't make objective sense why, but it makes no difference. So who cares.

My comprehension was/is just fine with the word “rooms”. If I need to pivot to “keys” to feel like an industry insider then my thoughts are..pretentious..annoying…sure..fine…done.

Go away

Is it “homeless” or “unhoused”? That’s the real question.

Sorry but I have never heard of anybody say keys before when describing how many rooms a hotel has.

Half bathroom is a ridiculous term that doesn't really exist outside the US though. Pretty much everyone else is happy to not be overly prudish and just call it a toilet...

Hotels use the terms room, suite, villa etc. pretty arbitrarily anyway, so I guess it is fine to just say rooms for all of that.

Depends on whether you prefer English or Orwellian Newspeak. Same for "illegal" and "undocumented".

People dumb. Includes some readers here. Use of keys is perfect, please don't dumb down for the lowest readers, Ben.

What about writing "It’s a 200-room property, with 150 STANDARD rooms, 25 suites, and 25 villas"?

Makes sense now I've had an explanation. Now if I can just understand why you use the term "lucked out" to mean "lucked in" I'll be all set 🙂

Keys rooms suites. What distinction i find valuable as the maximum number of guests the hotel can accommodate. Disney for instance has units that accommodate 8 people. So a 20 unit could actually be 160 guests at the breakfast every morning!

As a physician, the word “beds” to describe how many inpatients can be accommodated in a hospital or nursing home has forever annoyed me. Mainly because it feels so dehumanizing.

But “keys” I don’t mind - probably because we use other travel jargon here and at FlyerTalk (pax, FO, nonrev, etc).

Sorry that you never heard of anybody called you slow before.
But you are slow.

Why is bed dehumanizing?

You're an anti-stickler stickler just because you don't know the reason behind it.

How many room count do you think a 3 bedroom suite is? How many unit? How many keys?

And you are primitive, yet Ben still lets you post here

Ben did a bad job there.

The real question is how many 3 bedroom suites or 2 bedroom villas are there.

There lies the real answer.

Just because you use some weird terminology in weirdUSA doesn't make this a legit worldwide term. I work in hospitality too. No one ever talked about 'keys'. There aren't even keys for hotels for like 20 years already

I guess the industry has to use "keys" because "accommodations" has too many syllables?

This seems fine. It reminds me of a low-stakes version of the ATC usage "souls" aboard a plane. The point there is: crew, passengers, lap infants, every human being.

I guess 'service animals' do not have 'souls'...

They're still 'good' boys/girls, though, right? RIGHT??

Thank you, fake-Eskimo, for impersonating him, not me, this time. Phew!

Thx for the explanation Lucky. I had been chuckling to myself every time I read this thinking "there are probably a few more keys at the hotel for maintenance & stuff, so that number isn't completely accurate", but now it makes some sense.

Well for some, King beds can sleep 3 people while for others King bed only sleeps 2. If you really want to go down this path, why not just say the hotel has 30 king beds, 20 queen beds and 10 sofa beds?

lol now do “frames”

For the average person who's reading for the first couple times, standard rooms vs rooms makes no sense.

I also noticed it but never would have bothered to write a comment.

What "bothers" me is that Ben would claim that WiFi is free in some hotels.. Is it really free if you pay 1000$ per night? Or is it really free in J if you pay 5x the price of an economy ticket? I guess it is "included" in the price..

Keep up the good work Ben!!!

@VitaliU
Completely agree.
Unforunately all too many people do not seem interested in learning anything (and I am thinking of at work as well as online)

BTW, for those less than 60, keys used to be pieces of metal, which were on rings with tassels or leather /metal tags, and hung on the wall behind the reception desk. One asked for one's key going into the building, and left it at reception when going out. There was typically only one key for each accommodation unit, but staff had master/skeleton keys. For possible abuses of the setup, see the novel Hotel by Arthur Hailey.

I had to look up Douchey !
But I don't object to learning the meaning.

It's "included", but marketing types think "free" sounds better.

I dunno, is the little bag of pretzels you get on a $500 flight in economy "free"?

Because of those 150 rooms, there are only 2 STANDARD rooms (with view of the garbage truck) that are eligible for redemptions, the other 148 are rooms with parking lot view, pavement view, the office building across the street view,...

For properties that have suites composed of two rooms, would that be considered 2 separate keys. In other words,

200-key property with 150 rooms and 25 suites (each of which has two entries and two "keys")

Just curious as to how far the distinction goes.

Thank You ! I never knew. My husband had an executive level position with Waldorf Astoria Hotels and I had a background in corporate travel management and amazingly enough had not heard of the term "keys" until recently.
And I confess I did not know the difference until now.

It seems to me that 4-top rather than 4-seater makes sense if you've ever watched them call out orders in the kitchen. "Top" is easier to say and hear than "seater" when you're talking in a rush. A good example is listening to Gordan Ramsey call out orders on "Hell's Kitchen."

I worked in two hotels in CT in the 80s, and "Keys" was a thing then, too. Restaurants have "Covers". Normal industry jargon. Keep using the term; others can just get over it.

"If OMAAT readers really hate my use of the term, I’ll stop using it."
Thank you~ that would be great!
Didn't really want to say it, but the expression sounds super-wankerish. Not sure if as an American you understand that term, but I can assure you you would be aghast that anyone may think of you in those terms.

Oh cripes I was SO sure I was the center of the world. Time to re-evaluate my life!

So, @Megan do you thing this blog is dumb by not adopting a industry term indicating hotal capacity?
Readers here are hotel guests or customers, not industry insiders.
Let them have their own jargon, and keep it in-house.
Finally, on behalf of all the Glenns (3 on last count) we resent your silly little one-liners such as this that seem to pop out of your head at random moments.

Another reason calling a 200-room property with 180 rooms and 20 suites is confusing is because suites can have multiple bedrooms. What if the 20 suites all have 2 bedrooms? Then it's really a 220 room property. If you just call it 200 key property, that's simpler.

800 pound social media influencer speak to my ears. Keys is appropriate if your target audience is hoteliers. In which case most of us would not be reading you. I am concerned about the company you might be keeping. Let keys jargon go please.

Please continue using the word “keys.” It’s an accurate description.

To me, it’s similar to the airline distinction between “direct” and “nonstop” flights.

Yeah, this version of Eskimo is just plain NASTEE....

Please don’t dummy-down your work for those that likely wake up every morning in a 200 key hotel, angry; because they did not have points for the upgrade suite I was enjoying. See, I learned something! Thanks!