Hotel’s property, hotel’s rules on what they want for guest check-in as long as it is legal. Not much you can do about it but try a different place of business and eat any costs from that.

That said, I do appreciate customer concerns about when a hotel for its own reasons — not related to a government mandate — wants its management/employees to hold the ID rather than to accept a quick flash of it while in the hand of its owner/bearer. It’s hard to safely prevent the hotel from copying, scanning or photographing the ID once the ID is in the physical possession of the hotel. Bank card info along with the photo ID details/copy can cause the named person plenty of trouble when that material is in the hands of a troublemaker.

In some markets where hotels aren’t all picky about photo ID from me, I sometimes prefer to book the hotels that won’t ask me for ID or that accept a flash from the ID in my hand instead of wanting to take possession of the ID and do anything from copying it/scanning it, to taking down details from it, to looking through it unnecessarily and/or for an unnecessarily long time. That can mean booking away from Marrriott. In my experience with Marriott hotels asking for ID, Marriott is like the other major chains in the country with employees being inconsistent from customer to customer in how closely they want to examine the ID. For plenty of front desk agents, easier to see the ID closely before pulling up the reservation and doing the check-in based on further detail examination in order to check in the right guest using the right reservation and to minimize various risks for business purposes.

Aren’t there some Marriott hotels in the US that still have functioning self-check-in kiosks that work to get room keys one way or another? Mobile check-in with a mobile phone key was spreading in the industry. Isn’t it spreading with Marriott too?