For many years, I have used hotel lobbies for informal meetings with colleagues, etc... I'll also use them to spend a couple of hours working after checking out for a late flight or waiting to check in after an early arrival. This usually results in revenue of a few coffees, pastries, etc... for the hotel coffee shops while we have our meetings.

Of late however, I have noticed more and more hotels actively discouraging this. Security constantly hovers around anyone who sits down for more than a few minutes and generally makes things very uncomfortable. In worst case scenarios, security will sometimes ask people to leave or get law enforcement involved to check IDs.

I've seen this happen at hotels in India, Egypt, Nigeria, UAE, Kenya, China, Thailand, Philippines and South Africa over the last few years. Am I the only one to notice this or is this symptomatic of a greater security paranoia at hotels worldwide?

PS. I'm writing this using the Public Wifi in the Marriott Beijing Northeast lobby. I've been almost kicked out once already by security and had a second dust-up with a security guy who backed off when he found that I had checked out a couple hours ago.