Ancien Maestro

Lets say the amateur thief rips open the sticker accessing the safe? What recourse would you have? There is no evidence who entered it, or who opened the safe to rip the sticker..

nba1017

This is a little different. By leaving something in the general hotel safe at the front desk, you're effectively transferring care, and by extension, responsibility, for an item to the hotel. So, thus, if you declare that you're asking the hotel to hold, say $20,000 in cash in their safe, you're going to be getting every penny of that back.


The hotel is not liable for valuables in your room and tend to notify guests of that fact very prominently.

GoingAway

Agree with all of the Above, the safe should not be consideredvsecure butndoes offer a deterrent and also provides a place to gather some items that I don't want to carry with me all the time. That said, I also use the suitcase, and pockets in the suitcase for some items.

On a recent trip, the safe didn't respond. When the guy came up to the room, he removed the cover right below the lock, used a key and opened it. No machine, no effort, not much trust after that (the problem happened multiple times and turned out to be the battery just needed to be replaced)

Steve M

You wouldn't have any recourse. The sticker idea is effective against one kind of theft: where the thief accesses the safe, and only takes a small portion of the cash such that the victim will likely never know they were hit. If a thief is going to take $100 out of a wallet having $800 and leave $700, they are very interested in remaining undetected. This is especially true if it's an inside job, as they likely want management to remain unaware that there is a rogue employee. They'll get away with far more in the long run.

Ancien Maestro

Agreed with you illustration..

But my point was even if the sticker was broken.. and I report the theft to the hotel.. how can I prove that anything was taken by a rogue employee, as the sticker could have been ripped by myself, spouse, kids, etc who has access to the safe.. Its just not a fool proof way to know..

and even if I'm convinced in my mind, it is impossible to present that as clear cut evidence that anything was stolen out of the safe..

QueenOfCoach

The paper sticker is poor protection, at best.

It occurred to me that the paper sticker with your signature might accomplish three things:

1. Alert you to the fact the safe had been opened. You would then, immediately, inventory your cash and other belongings to see what is missing.

2. Deter the very casual amateur thief.

3. Inform the management that they have a sneak thief on their staff.

It would not PROVE that your safe had been entered by a hotel employee. However, if the hotel manager has suspicions about Employee X and if Employee X had access to your room and opportunity to enter, then the hotel manager might (might) take actions against Employee X. Mr X could be fired, reported to the police, whatever. If the hotel manager had no reasons to suspect any employee of theft, then the paper sticker would be useless as evidence.

Even if you got no support from the hotel manager, you still have the option of going to Trip Advisor and writing about your experience. That, alone, might inform and deter others.

A paper sticker is cheap, easy to carry around and easy to permanently remove when you leave. I'm thinking "Why not?". Can't do any harm. Might do some good.

Ancien Maestro

Yes I agree, the trip advisor and the flyer talk review will definitely keep the hotel on their toes..

The method won't compensate, but certainly you make it a good point to read trip advisor reviews about the hotel before visiting, and stuffing things in a safe..

gfunkdave

Here's an interesting twist: apparently some hotels don't bother changing their safes' default master code.

http://thedailywh.at/2011/09/06/psa-of-the-day-23/

erik123

TA is full of safe thefts - especially at all-in hotels (where staff is poorly paid).

It is almost always an inside job (as are most thefts). A safe with key seems to be more prone to theft.

A sticker that indicates in the local language with a warning message will ahve an effect (e.g. that the room has been fitted with a camera or that the safe contains a dangerous, toxic medication).

Ancien Maestro

Definitely will make a note of it, if I stay at a hotel other than Fairmont.. I've never lost an item in my many years of travel at Fairmont..

srt8-blue

Opens my eyes wide

joer1212

I had the same thing happen to me in the Dominican Republic. The staff stole a one-hundred dollar bill from my safe. I noticed this when I got to the airport on my way home. The scoundrel who did this was smart. He waited until my last day at the hotel to do this. Since then, I have NEVER trusted hotel safes again. I never put anything in there.

slawecki

had a big safe in my business. had it bolted to a brick wall on the side of the building. came in the next morning and had a huge hole in the side of the building.

wife and i can never figure out how today's safe works. we call front desk. they send a guy up, and he opens the safe in30 sec. we put in our secret code, and a day later, cannot open the safe. a different guy shows up, and opens the safe.

store money and important documents on your body. don't carry camera equipment and computers and the like that you cannot afford to loose.

also, do not store them in luggage or back packs or the like.

CMA45

I trust them for the most part, but irreplaceable items will always remain on my person or with the front desk. Basically, I am prepped if things go missing from it (unlikely and never happened to me) but am confident enough in the hotels that I chose to not have to sweat it much.

cbn42

My feeling is that the room safe is more secure than keeping something on my person when I'm out and about in a city I'm visiting. The odds of getting robbed or pickpocketed, dropping something, etc., are much higher than the odds that the safe has been compromised.