Not weighing in on OP's post at all, but I do want to dispel a common misunderstanding. Your reservation status does not affect your room key at most hotels. The key is encoded with an expiration date and time. When you touch it/insert it to the door, the key tells the door "I am the current key that has access to this room until this date/time". If you're checked out early, the key and the door don't know that. The only way to lock someone out of said room prior to that expiration is for a different/re-encoded key to touch the door and tell it that THAT key is the current key allowed to access the room until X date/time.