How secure is my hotel safe?
 

I travel all over the world for business. Often I'm in four or five star hotels. How secure is the "safe" in my hotel room? Thank you for your help.

I've never had a problem using the room safe.

However, how often do you think someone forgets their code? Or checks out leaving the safe locked? Someone on the staff has the pass code/key. If any member of the housekeeping staff can let you into the safe, I wouldn't leave anything valuable in there. If instead, you have to wait for a member of security to retrieve the pass key & come up, it's a little better. If a locksmith has to be called in to drill out the lock, the safe is pretty secure. :)

I was told at a Holiday Inn that only members of management could access the safe once it is locked. I don't know what the policies are at different hotel establishments. I'd certainly hope the housekeeping wouldn't have the ability to override the pass code. If I was storing something highly valuable, I'd ask to use the hotel's safety deposit box (assuming they have one).

I'm sure there are many types of these safes. Last weekend, previous room occupant checked out with safe locked. Maintenance man came up with some kind of handheld device that he either plugged in or transmitted to the safe wirelessly, it took him a few minutes to get it opened. It wasn't something quick that I'd expect a sneaky housekeeper to be able to do.

How about the casino vault? :D

Last time I had them hold my bag-o Diamonds some guy who looked just like George Clooney came in and took em. :D

When you're looking at the safe, be sure to look at where it's mounted. Sometimes the safes are just resting against some dry wall -- fine for low end items, not what you want to use if people know you're carrying something pricey.

Depends
 

Without going into too many details - it's good enough to prevent a larcenous maid (or any other interested parties) from lifting your wallet/camera/anything else you left in your room.

Anyone with a bit more skill and/or equipped with a several thousand dollar electronic device (or other equipment, depending on the exact type of safe used) can easily get it opened in < 5 minutes.

If you do have something that you're really concerned about, use the front-desk safe - better in many ways: hotels have very limited liability for in-room safes, but a much more substantial one for the front-desk safe; access to the front-desk safe is usually fairly well controlled, etc.

Hope this helps ... :)

I was staying in Cambodia and had some valuables in a safe at a very nice hotel. I came back to find that we were being moved to another hotel (our luggage had already been moved) ostensibly due to an overbooking error. The owner of both hotels got involved in this fray. When I told him I was using the safe in a room now turned over to other guests. He said no problem, and in a few minutes, an assistant came downstairs toting this heavy safe. It was a standard hotel safe and the hotel was well done and met all U.S./European standards. So I guess the message is, that the safe may be difficult to break into, but it's not so difficult to remove and carry out.

At the Grand Hotel Intercontinental in Paris, my room safe wasnt accepting a code, so I called the front desk. Two people showed up from hotel management to reprogram it with a hand-held device. I casually mentioned, "I didn't think it was a big enough deal to send two people..." when one of them said that the hotel policy is that two members of the hotel staff need to present whenever a guest's room safe is opened."

same thing happened to me in vegas at the rio 'cept the lock would not open after i programmed the code. 2 folks came to open the locked safe and when they did get it open, the needed to change the lock mechanism but asked if i would remove my items from the safe.

I once stayed at a Sheraton and noticed the safe was already locked. I called down and the manager came up. I couldn't tell if he entered a code or had a key, but it was open within 10 seconds.

Seeing that made me feel hotel safes are much less secure than I had thought. I still feel comfortable placing cameras and passports in them. But, if I were carrying something worth more than the average house (highly unlikely), then I'd definitely place it in the main safe downstairs.

Same happened to me; checked into a room, the safe was locked, it took the two people about 3 to 5 minutes to open it, then they inspected carefully to see it was empty. They griped about what a hassle is was when guests did that, and apologized to me. They had paperwork to document anything they might have found inside.