The innkeeper's duty to receive and the narrow grounds for refusal, removing a guest who has become a trespasser, limits on liability for property left in a room, mandatory fee disclosure, accessibility obligations, short-term rental registration, and resort and franchise arrangements.
At common law an innkeeper had to receive any traveler able to pay and fit to be received. Modern lodging statutes restate the duty and list the grounds for refusal: no vacancy, inability or refusal to pay, intoxication or disorderly conduct, exceeding posted occupancy, and use of the room for an unlawful purpose. Federal public accommodation law and state civil rights acts remove protected characteristics from the list, and disability law adds obligations rather than exceptions.
Statutes give a lodging operator a lien on a guest's baggage and other property for room charges and extras furnished at the guest's request. The lien does not reach exempt property, property belonging to someone else once the operator has notice, or, in many states, the guest's essential items. Enforcement is regulated: some states require a judgment before sale, others prescribe notice, advertising and a public sale, with surplus proceeds held for the owner.
Every state has replaced the common law innkeeper's near-strict liability for guest property with a statutory cap. The cap typically applies only where the establishment provided a safe or safekeeping facility and posted the statutory notice where guests can see it. Amounts are low and are often split into per-item and aggregate limits. Property accepted for safekeeping usually attracts a separate, higher limit and a receipt requirement. Negligence and refusal of deposit can defeat the cap.
Federal regulations require places of lodging to let people with disabilities reserve accessible rooms during the same hours and in the same manner as anyone else, to describe accessible features in enough detail for independent assessment, to hold accessible rooms back until all others of that type are taken, to block a specific reserved room from other systems, and to guarantee it. Three of those duties are relaxed for units the entity does not own or substantially control.
State lodging statutes let an operator eject a guest for nonpayment, disorderly conduct, exceeding occupancy or refusing to leave at checkout, usually on a prescribed oral or written notice that takes effect on delivery. A guest who stays after notice commits a criminal offense in many states. None of that machinery is available against an occupant whose stay has converted into a tenancy, where removal requires a court process. Guest property must be returned promptly, subject to any lien.
A confirmed lodging reservation is a contract, and failing to supply the room is a breach whose ordinary measure is the additional cost of comparable accommodation plus reasonably foreseeable expenses. There is no lodging equivalent of the federal oversales rule that governs denied boarding on airlines. Brand standards typically direct that a walked guest be placed in a comparable property at the operator's cost, with transport and a call home, and remaining nights honored on return.
Municipal short-term rental schemes typically combine a registration requirement with two substantive limits: a cap on unhosted nights per calendar year, and a primary residence condition proved by a minimum number of days of occupancy. Hosted stays are often uncapped. Some cities restrict short lets to the host's presence entirely and limit paying guests per stay. Enforcement runs through registration numbers in listings and platform obligations rather than through inspection.
Statutes exclude transient occupancy from landlord and tenant acts, but transience is a description rather than a duration. The factors that matter are the length and open-endedness of the stay, whether the rate is nightly or monthly, whether the operator retains housekeeping access, whether the occupant has another residence, and whether hotel services are actually supplied. Several states set a presumption at a fixed number of days, and several prohibit forcing a check-out to reset the count.
Liability for a third party's criminal act against a guest requires a duty, a breach, causation and damages, with foreseeability doing most of the work. Courts use prior similar incidents on or near the premises, the totality of the circumstances, or a combination. The standard of care is reasonable measures in proportion to the risk, not maximum security. Several states have enacted statutory safe harbors that create a presumption against liability where listed measures are in place.
A federal rule on unfair or deceptive fees requires any business advertising short-term lodging to disclose the total price, defined as the maximum of all fees a consumer must pay including mandatory ancillary goods and services. The total must be shown more prominently than other pricing information. Government charges, shipping and genuinely optional add-ons may be excluded from that figure but must be disclosed with their nature, amount and purpose before payment is requested.
A branded lodging property typically involves an owner, a management company or franchisee that runs day-to-day operations, and a brand that licenses the name and sets standards. A brand is generally not liable for an operator's conduct unless it controlled the activity that caused the harm, or a guest reasonably believed the brand was the operator. Franchise disclosure rules require the relationship to be documented.
