how safe is a hotel safe?
 

i was thinking dozens of guests must forget their safe code or go home and leave it locked

does the maid have a code to overide the safe and open it if they were dishonest?

how safe is a hotel safe?
 

Hotel management does but housekeeping generally not.

on the two occasions ours would not open, a maintenance person was sent.

A grandson mis-coded mine, and the hotel sent somebody from maintenance to open it. He had a device about the size of the old "brick" cell phones that did the job electronically.

Romelle

There are some ideas and tips here as well:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trave...otel-safe.html

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trave...otel-safe.html

There are reports that some safes can be opened, by anyone, using a default code: 0000.

http://gadling.com/2011/09/06/your-h...-as-you-think/

alarms on hotel safe
 

Has anyone else run into the variety of hotel room safe that sets off a loud alarm if you do it wrong? We had one of these recently, that I managed to set off the alarm on, even though I really thought I was following the instructions to the letter. That was when I was just trying to close it the first time.
The front desk sent a maintenance guy to reset it after a few minutes. The next day when someone new checked in next door, they set off the alarm about 5 times in a row (it stops after a couple minutes). I guess it just took them a little longer to figure out that the instructions are missing a step or something.

Better than leaving your stuff out in the room, but not by much. You could get into one easily with a Sawzall. Think of a dollar amount of loss that wouldn't devastate you. Anything below that goes in the in-room safe. Everything else goes downstairs in the front desk safe.

Thefts from those safes are fairly rare though. My high-stakes gambler colleagues have collectively left tens if not hundreds of thousands in those safes without incident. Other than where they invited an untrusted person into their room for an overnight visit willingly.

BTW, always pull up the little carpet that's on the floor of most safes and look. Sometimes you will find little presents inside. Or if I've stayed there before, you will find some kind of rock and roll sticker affixed to the inside of the safe where it's not easily visible.

Yeah, like the soaking-wet towel that was stuffed into the safe of an executive-floor room at the Hilton Knoxville. :td:

I checked into a hotel in Las Vegas and the safe was locked. They sent up a maintenance man, he had a special electronic device which allowed him to unlock the safe.
PS: Out of curiosity, I've tried various "generic" codes 0000, 9999, etc. none of these worked. Do any "secure" safes actually have such codes.

Twice I've had to have a safe opened and it was a huge rigmarole at two different hotels. Once it was locked upon checking in and the other it wouldn't open for us. The head of security in one case and in the other case it was someone very high up the staff scale came to our room to help and they both had a witness. I had to sign to say that the staff member had permission to override the code.

I screwed up the hotel safe in Singapore once, resulting in me being unable to open it. A call to reception brought a nice man in a suit with an electronic device who opened it within seconds. Unfortunately to the sight of 8 or 10 cans of warm Tiger beer. :o

Not as bad it sounds, I have recounted the story before, won't bother again. :)

I had an incident recently in regional England where the safe failed to open when I entered the correct code. The technician was called and a couple of minutes later entered the magic code to no avail.

He then did something I didn't see and it opened. Turned out the batteries were flat and upon replacement the safe worked perfectly.

At the Ovolo in Hong Kong I must have mis-entered by one digit from my normal code and couldn't get it open and like others reported a man that seemed to be maintenance came up with a large device to open it. I also had to show him that the room key I had opened the hotel room door.

At The Table Bay Hotel (V&A - Cape Town) I came back and it kept getting and error when trying to open. I called the front desk and 5 min later a man from security came and he said I had left the safe open the maids saw that and their procedure is to leave the room and call security. Security then comes in and locks it. He opened it for me and asked me to inspect that all was in order (which it was).