stackm

Just curious, how many folks have had problems when leaving a bag with your hotel.

I'm mostly interested in incidents at 4 or 5 star hotels. Either a missing bag or stolen items from your bag.

I stay 300 nights a year at various hotels, and often leave a bag overnight or even a couple of days.

I don't leave extremely valuable stuff, but I would find missing items a major inconvenience.

Have not had a bad experience but I wonder if I am pressing my luck. I do have a lock but I'm sure it could be opened by a thief.

N965VJ

I'm a Hilton Diamond and a Marriott Plat with a bunch of other stays in everything from fancy boutique hotels to craptacular motels in the middle of nowhere.

I've never had anything stolen from my room or bag, but then I do a few proactive things to reduce the risk. I take the phone off the hook and leave the TV and lights on with the DND card on the door when I'm out in the evening. My laptop bag is with me during the day, so the only thing in my room is my rollaboard with my clothes and little bitty tubes of tubes of toothpaste and minis. I would be PO'ed if my minis disappeared.

I never leave anything in my rental, and throw the empty end of the phone charging / USB / audio cables on the dash when I park.

exerda

I have never had a problem, but a lot of hotels have fairly minimal control and supervision of bags left with the concierge. I would be very hesitant to leave anything of value in them.

GUWonder

Same goes for me. I avoid leaving valuables in bags that I store with/in the hotel, even after I check out.

I have way more stays at hotels than I have flights where I check in luggage, and yet I have had things go missing from bags checked in by the airlines. That said, this only hits me when flying out of an airport where TSA is running "security".

N965VJ

Yeah, and that's one aspect that seems to be all over the place regarding procedures.

I wanted to leave my rollerboard with the front desk at a Hampton somewhere, and the FD tagged it and gave me a receipt.

When I was checking in to the ATL Marriott, we had a question for the parking valet person. The FD person offered to stick my bags behind the small Plat check in desk (basically a little cubby hole across from the main desk, no rear door just walk around the counter) instead of me dragging it when the two of us went outside. Very nice customer service overall, but I declined on leaving it there.

DL managed to smehow not get my bag on a single segment domestic flight on one of the handful of times I've checked something this year. They got it on the next flight, and it was delivered some time overnite to the TownPlace Suites I was staying at. The next morning I stop by the FD and see it up against the wall.

"Hey, that's the bag I need..." I tell the FD person as I'm pulling my passport card out of my money clip. But they just gave it to me without question.

Tizzette

I had a typical black rollerbag that I checked into the hotel luggage room. When I came back, it was gone. The hotel had loaded it in a cab with a group's luggage and none of those folks noticed it wasn't theirs. Somehow it made it all the way to Sacremento with them, where it went unclaimed on the baggage carousel.

A more common problem is simple delay. You expect it to take 10 minutes to retrieve your bag but it takes 30 or 40 and you need to get to the airport.

I now mark my very ordinary black bag with blue painter's tape around all the handles. It is not only easy to spot, but it looks so shabby now that nobody would want it or think it contains anything valuable.

xooz

I have never had anything taken from a room. I do leaves bags with the concierge desk pretty frequently. I will often have a laptop in my suitcase. I have never had a problem. Perhaps this is risky, but I think the risk of something happening while I am wandering around touring while carrying a laptop is equal or greater than having it happen at the hotel concierge desk.. and I think I would get more interest from hotel management than I would get from local authorities in the case where a laptop was stolen/went missing.

nrr

I once booked a hotel in Los Angeles--it was not a hotel but a motel. When I was checking out, I wanted to leave a bag with them for retrieval later in the day, they refused.
After 9/11 (and even before), public lockers began disappearing.
Fortunately my bag was small, and I went to Universal Studios (for a tour), and they did have (small) lockers.

RadioGirl

I can only comment on non-USA hotels (most of my infrequent trips to the US involve family visits) but for Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and western Europe:

I stay in mostly 3-star/4-star places (small chains or independent hotels rather than the major chains). I've never had anything stolen from the hotel room itself, but I make a point not to leave valuable items lying around.

I often leave my main suitcase, and sometimes my carry-on bag or backpack, at the hotel front desk until a flight later in the day. Some places just tuck it off to the side, others put it in a locked room. Some give me a numbered receipt, others don't. My regular hotel in France puts it in the "business center" alcove next to the registration desk, but they know all their customers by name and I'm comfortable that they wouldn't let someone else take it.

I have a distinctive (non-black) suitcase with a bright luggage strap with my name on it, so I don't worry about someone taking it by mistake. If I leave my carry-on (with laptop and other valuables) I lock it shut and cable it to the main suitcase as well. Something like this: Combo lock with small cable is very useful for such purposes and for securing multiple zippers.


Edit to add: A colleague of mine "lost" a bag that he had left with the concierge, put away in a locked room with a receipt, at a hotel in Oslo. 6 or 7 of us had left our bags there, but one guy's bag was "gone" when we returned. The hotel found it a day or two later and arranged to have it shipped to my friend at their expense; it had just been placed in an odd corner and overlooked.

cfo314

Is there a time limit on leaving my bag at a hotel? I expect to check out around 2pm or whenever the late check out is and come back after a ball game to pick it up, around 10:30 or 11pm.

Safe to leave laptop/ipad in luggage? Thanks.

RadioGirl

Probably no time limit but it depends on the policy of the hotel. Usually they do this as a (simple, no-cost) service to their guests, so a few hours or 9 hours shouldn't really matter. If you're concerned, call the hotel and ask.
That depends entirely on the hotel and city. Some countries/cities have a culture of honesty and trust, and others are a bit dodgy. Some hotels put your bag in a locked room and give you a claim ticket so that (in theory) no one else collect your bag. Other hotels just put your bag off to the side of the lobby and just let you (or, possibly, someone else) pick it up later.

manneca

I have often left a bag for a couple of weeks at a hotel, sometimes it's my pillow and blanket and my flying clothes that I don't want to haul all over wherever I'm headed next.

Leaving valuables, it depends on the country and the hotel. I'd not blink about leaving it in Japan anywhere. And despite cultural stereotypes, I left (accidentally) a camera in an historic site in Cairo, remembered it about half an hour later. The tourist police had it.

CKA1

I had the opposite problem. I was with a group and we put about 25 bags behind the counter, in a locked room. We were enjoying some drinks at the hotel pub, before we would travel to the airport and enjoy more drinks...

We went to get our baggage and we had exactly 24 slips of paper. Mine was missing. So I pointed out which bag was mine, explained our situation and said that I (as group leader) must have lost the ticket, but I knew exactly what was in the bag and we could privately look. I told him there would be a blue and white tie, a charcoal suit, three identical white shirts, etc.

So we opened it, and I got on my way. Turned out somebody else had my slip of paper and forgot they had it.

We didn't miss a flight, but I would rather have rebooked than flew home without my entire business professional wardrobe. I was not poor, but for these conferences, you had to wear dress clothing and I simply only had a little bit. If I'd lost the suitcase, I'd of said goodbye to some stuff I wouldn't want to lose.

C.

Himeno

I've left my bag at hotels and hostels all over the world, both in a locked room and in the common left luggage storage area, without any sort of problem.

The only times I've had issues with bags or items in said bags has been when TSA broke things and when my bag got misplaced at LHR during an IB>BA connection.

Mabuk dan gila

I never had a problem with this. Including leaving bags over a year in some kind of dodgy hotels, in some kind of dodgy countries, where at least I have a good rapport with the staff. I do limit my potential loss to value that wouldn't ruin my day if it ever went wrong but so far, everything is always in order. Except for perhaps a little tropical mildew here and there.

YMMV.