Hotel Keycards - Charge for losing them?
 

Can anyone shed some light on why it seems like a number of hotels I've stayed at in Asia (previous stays at hotels in Korea and Japan come to mind in particular) want the room keycard returned or a fee will be charged. We recently ran into this situation in Seoul where we had to track down the second keycard (in my wallet :)) else we would have been dinged a fee. Whereas, in North America, it seems like they're handing them out like candy; if I take the keycard home or leave them at the frontdesk it doesn't seem to be a big deal; if I forget the card in my room, no prob, here's another one.

Are the cards different in some way that makes them more expensive in Asia??

what hotel? I've lost/taken home my fair share of room cards from hotels in the region and never been charged a fee.

Well, this trip it was a little boutique hotel in Seoul we found off of Agoda called Hotel Aropa.

I've seen fees for failure to return some of the high tech keycards that presumably are a lot more expensive than the normal little piece of this plastic used in most USA hotels.

Unfortunately, I've also stayed in cheap little hotels in Europe that seem to have one permanent key card for each room, often with the room number printed on the card. There's no indication that the key card code is changed between guests or even that the hotel has the capacity to make these key cards.