I don’t remember who first suggested it, but taking a photo of your parking spot when you’ve parked in a massive parking garage where every turn and every floor looks identical, is a brilliant idea. Consider taking this strategy on the road, if you will, for hotel rooms as well.
It’s been ages since a front desk agent handed me a brass key ring with a room number on it. Electronic key cards have been around for a generation already. And key cards are giving way to key fobs of sorts, in some technologically advanced hotels. Nevertheless, the keycard, for good security reasons gives no indication what room number it belongs to in the case that it might be lost. However, unless you’re the kind of traveler who keeps the card stock key packet with your plastic key at all times, you’re bound to let the room number slip your mind.
Take a rather extreme scenario that I experienced one of the last times I visited Las Vegas. I had checked in to the Bellagio rather quickly, unloaded my luggage into my beautiful room and returned to the lobby to meet my sales manager who was going to tour the property with me. She proceeded to show me a half dozen rooms around the resort of various shapes and sizes. I then headed to the Venetian where I’d meet another sales manager and tour that mammoth property. The Venetian, incidentally, has upwards of 7,000 guest rooms, the largest hotel in the hemisphere. And while I can’t attest to having seen all of them, I was shown a great many.
By the time I returned to the Bellagio, I’d seen enough rooms, been over enough thresholds, been in and out of enough elevators, and down enough hallways, that it would have been a marvel if I could guess my room number at the Bellagio correct in a thousand tries. Mind you, room numbers in Las Vegas are typically five digit numbers. With the Bellagio having nearly 4,000 guest rooms of its own, my choices were to try my card in each lock. Or, humbly, and sober, return to the front desk of the hotel and admit I didn’t have the London foggiest idea behind what door my luggage lay.
A simple picture of the placard next to my door at Bellagio could have saved some