10 or 12 years ago I used to visit a lot of Federal Government or military sites, very often they would require that you surrendered your driver's license upon entry.
At one such visit in Ottawa, when we went to leave, the driver's license of one of the people in our party could not be found. What a mess that turned out to be. He could not prove who he was, he was no longer registered to be in the building; they arrested him. His wife had to drive in from (her government job) in Gatineau to vouch for him. Evidently they had given his identification to the wrong person, but there was no convincing the security staff and no way to prove it. We had to leave him there and carry on with the rest of our calls.
Ever since then when asked to surrender my drivers license, I refuse. Most often they refuse me entry. I simply tell them, "This is the contact who asked me to be here, I'll give you 5 minutes to confirm, then I'm leaving, you can explain why I left". It turns out this is a VERY common problem. I usually get a hurried call to hold the meeting off site, or someone comes to security to sign me in.
From what I could tell at the time, security grunts are not allowed to hold your government issued photo identification. If they are not, I can't imagine that a hotel could.
I could understand hotels checking your drivers license to verify who you are (especially if it is photo ID), but not have you surrender it or take a copy of it. Drivers license information plus credit card information combined is just asking for trouble.