Many of us assume the safe stashed in the closet of our hotel room offers security for our valuables. Well, it’s certainly better than nothing but far from completely secure.
Take a look at this video, a demonstration of how easy it is for an expert to get into your locked room safe using the simplest of tools:
I’ve always viewed hotel room safes as a good place to store things like passports and SD cards and the like, but I don’t keep cash in them or any other valuables except at night when I’m in the room.
Your hotel room itself offers a certain degree of safety as it’s not that easy to get into without a pass key. Yes, hotel employees have them, but they also have jobs most of them want to keep, so they’re not likely to steal something locked in a safe.
A few points to note: 1) make sure the hotel safe is bolted to the wall or something solid, 2) If you have something truly valuable, as the concierge or hotel staff if you can use the hotel safe, or safe deposit boxes ( which are kept in a more secure environment) 3) the hotel has a way to access the contents of a room safe if you forget your code, so if dishonest, they could use this technique to gain access to your valuables.
Best advice is not to travel with anything you treasure or find valuable. Leave the fancy jewels and gold necklaces at home. Take costume jewelry with you if you need to travel with jewelry. And keep your cash in a money belt on your person, rather than locked in your room.
More on this story at the Huffington Post at this link.
