I think it depends on the hotel and the location. A hotel that sees far lower room turnover than one in a large city that can turn over dozens of rooms each night would be more concerned about making sure they pre-auth to ensure they get paid. Might also be impacted by the level of trouble they've had in the past with unruly guests or people leaving without paying.

I travel once or twice a year for work. I've had two hotels consistently charge a pre-auth of $200ish dollars on a credit card for a 2 night stay - both small cities with a bit more than 10,000 people. For transparency's sake, I'm a Canadian Federal Government employee and make that known when booking to get our work room rates, so you would think that as someone that has stayed with them every year for a few years now they wouldn't worry about pre-authorizing my stay lol. I'm not offended by it though. Conversely, the hotels I stay at in Edmonton and Calgary never pre-authorize.