You got me googling:
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Why on earth wouldnât you give your guests keys. You will put off a lot of people from staying and means you need to be their 24/7. Donât you ever go out?
Is it clear in your listing that people arenât allowed a key to come and go as they please.
I think the error I see most often on this board is people writing loose when they mean lose.
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Is a key necessary when renting a room inside the house and there are residents always home? I donât have this situation, but honestly Iâd feel goosey about giving out keys to my main residence to perfect strangers who could go and have a copy made at any hardware store. He may consider installing a changeable keypad to address both the house security and the guest concerns.
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I think itâs the norm to give front door keys to guests even when the listing is a private room. If you donât give keys to guests you would need to have a curfew as weâve had many guests come home after weâre asleep. I think itâs fine to not give keys to guests. You just need to make it clear in the listing and the listing should specify any times the guests wonât be able to get in.
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Let me try and explain 
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- We are in a rental apartment. The front door of our apartment has two locks, both with keys that donât require a certificate to duplicate the key.
- We are in Lima, a city where strange things do happen, so it is advised to mind your valuables and your personal safety.
If a key would get lost, we have to consider replacing two locks each time this happens. This is perfectly manageable. Less manageable is the fear of nationals copying a key and âreturningâ a few weeks after their stay. Did you read the beginning of this topic? These guests really had us worried, and in fact my hubby is opposing the factual review I want to leave, because he fears the âboyfriendâ coming back or sending someone over to our place to teach us a lesson 
.
When we have guests, we try to have someone at home (me, my hubby or a friend or family member who happens to be around). Or in case all of us have to leave, we normally know when a guest will return from his day trip, or we are close by so they can call us and we can be back in 10 minutes. Until now this hasnât caused any problem, major inconvenience or complaint. Apart from these guests, all our guests understand that this is normal when staying in a family home.
Also take into account that we arenât fully booked yet. We still have more than enough days without guests.
We have one Mexican friend / guest who does get the key because we totally trust him. We also gave a key to a guest staying for 3 weeks. She was a sweet Chilean girl who was doing her medical internship. We totally trusted her, but she did forget to return us our keys, so we had to have them duplicated again. Since then the general rule is to not give out any keys. There might be cases where we will make an exception.
Contrary to what some people have written here, we donât have the key-rule in our house rules. Why? Because I consider it normal to not hand over any keys. 
Itâs our home.
Do most live-in-hosts hand out keys here? 
The moment we buy our own apartment I will however install a lock with magnetic cards, so I can reprogram the lock when required. (I just see that Kona is proposing something in the same sense.) But for now, I am really not even going to consider giving a key to everyone.
@Helsi Does it make more sense to you now? Any questions? 
@Ellen We do not need a curfew. We try to get along with our guest, and we try to communicate well with them. We have never experienced any problems.
Yes but then our place isnât in a city like Lima and we own the place.
Are you only renting??
Absolutely itâs normal. Whoâs wants to get up at 3,4 or 5 in the morning to let a guest in. Or have to stay in your home 24/7 on the off chance that a guest wants to get in.
Also I would hate from a guest point of view to have to knock on the door and possibly wake a host up.
@EllenN When travelling around the world, I have even known loads of hotels where you have to ring the doorbell after a certain hour.
@Helsi For us and our guests, until now, it has never been an issue. Why should I change something that doesnât pose any problems?
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Yes I did and they sound terrible. What sort of checks and balances do you make before accepting a guest? Do you have verified ID, do you make sure they have a full face photo and profile? Do you ask them about their plans and why they chose your place before accepting a booking.
Personally I would never have let someone arrive that late or behave in that way, they would have been out on the ear as soon as the bad behaviour was exhibited.
Is there no way you can install a key pad?
If he doesnât own the place then I donât think this would be allowed by any landlord without prior consent.
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On the key thing:
Our first ever guests didnât get a key. Mainly because we rarely lock our front door (thatâs very normal here⌠strange idea, I know). But they mentioned it in the review and said they would have felt safer with the door locked and a key of their own. So after that we now always give a key and at least give the illusion that we keep the door locked! Actually we mostly do keep it locked now anyway, because of all the randoms weâve had through Airbnb weâre a lot more security conscious
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Yes, most of us hand out keys. When we have two guests (our maximum) I give each guest a key.
If the landlord is happy with him using Airbnb then it would be worth asking.
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Oh yes definitely but I donât know of many landlords that would be 
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We are on Instant Book, without verified ID and without recommendations.
A verified ID would scare away a lot of our guests I believe. For most nationals AirBnB is still quite (
) a new thing, and I believe it would be too much fuss for them.
And I donât want to discriminate people without recommendations or reviews.
Whenever we see that someone is using AirBnB for the first time, we try to explain the homestay concept, gently direct them to our house rules and ask them about their travel plans or the reason of their visit. Whenever the guests hadnât booked already (enquiry), this resulted in the guest not booking. But we are going to continue doing this anyway.
That is beside the point. As already explained at large, it was no problem to us. And not all people who arrive late act badly.
All due respect, but the day similar things happen in your place, tell us how you handled it. I donât think itâs as easy as you make it sound.
Since we are actively looking to move to another place, this is out of the question at this moment, but in other cases it could be a good option. But even then, only if the outlay of the place is such that we can keep our valuables safe.
But this is why I propose an electronic keypad. metal keys are just so last century. 
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But surely there are electronic solutions that donât have a permanent impact? I donât have this situation because my place is separate and lockable. But it sounds like with the security concerns in Lima, heâs justified about being paranoid about keys.
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But key or no key, the guest wasnât right to throw a tantrum about something that was disclosed in the listing and to which she agreed to at the time of booking.
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Iâve got no idea! 