The message arrives while you are doing something else: “Sorry, we can’t find the keys.” Before you decide anything, spend ten minutes establishing what has actually been lost.
Ask four questions
1. What exactly was on the keyring? A single door key is a nuisance. A key with a community fob, a garage remote, a mailbox key or a luggage tag showing the address is a different matter entirely.
2. Where were they lost? On the beach, in the sea, in a restaurant, in a taxi, or “somewhere in town”. Keys lost in water are keys nobody will use. Keys left on a café table are keys someone picked up.
3. When? Two hours ago and three days ago call for different responses.
4. Is anything identifying the property still with them? A key with the apartment number written on the fob is the scenario that decides the rest of this article.
Decide the risk honestly
High risk. The keys carried anything showing the address, or were lost near the property. Change the cylinder before the next check-in, and preferably today.
Low risk. A plain key, lost in the sea or in another town, with nothing attached. Getting the guest back inside and changing the cylinder at your convenience is a reasonable call.
The point of the distinction is not to avoid spending money. It is to avoid the situation where you decide it is probably fine, and then spend the rest of the season wondering.
Then deal with the immediate problem
The guest still has to get back into your property tonight. If a spare set is held locally, that solves it. If not, a locksmith can open the door once you have authorised the work and the guest’s identity has been confirmed against the booking.
You do not need to be in Spain for any of this. A phone call or a message is enough, and you decide who is invoiced.
Who pays
Set the expectation before the work happens.
- Guest loses the keys: most agreements make the guest liable, which is what a deposit exists for.
- Hardware failure, a jammed lock or a corroded key safe: that is the owner’s cost.
- Grey areas do exist. A key that snapped in a stiff lock is not really a lost key, whatever the guest says.
Say clearly who is paying before anything starts. Afterwards is too late to have the conversation comfortably.
Protect the next arrival
The next booking is the part that quietly costs money. Before the new guest arrives:
- Change the cylinder if the risk assessment said so.
- Update the key safe code, and tell the cleaner.
- Rewrite the arrival instructions if anything has changed, including a photograph of the box.
- Put a fresh spare set with your local contact, because you have just used the old one.
Prevention, for next season
Take the address off the keyring. A floating keyring for beach days is worth its tiny cost. And a set of keys that lives with someone in Altea turns an emergency into a twenty-minute errand.
If you want the system rather than the fix, the host guide covers how to set one up, and holiday rental work explains how owners abroad authorise a visit.