Makes you wonder exactly what they think they are covering themselves from.
This would be especially problematic at times when all the hotels in the area are full because of a convention or sports game.
But for walking off the street? Just general idiocy. What if you stain the carpets and break the walls, then disappear? They'd need some way to know who to send the cops after.
But this was just stupid.
My reservation was in the computer.
I had a wallet full of cards including the one I used to make the reservation.
I had a photo ID, just not a government-issued one.
They could trivially have looked me up on the web if they had wanted to.
Trust me. If I'm going to scam a hotel for a couple nights stay, it's not going to be a fleabag Travelodge at SFO. It's managing risk by inflexible rules, not sensible and flexible policy. Of course, IT organizations often do pretty much the same thing.
What's the penalty for faking a Visa with picture on it? Nothing.
Of course, there's still a penalty for fraud, but if you're just taking the reservation and not taking the money that's been paid for it, then it's going to be hard to prosecute.
It's not like it's the front line employee's or location manager's idea to informally record your identifiers "just in case" - at the very least it's a deep corporate policy. And the company didn't whimsically conjure up that requirement on its own, but was prompted to do so as part of implementing some kind of third party surveillance solution(s).
I do know if, as a business, you handle this sort of situation much worse than the TSA does, you're probably doing something wrong.
There was a free street concert - even for that the road was blocked on both sides and only those with valid IDs could get in.
So yeah, maybe not universal but it happens enough to be a hassle.