How Vulnerable are your Belongings in a Hotel?
Maybe I am a bit naive, but I generally think that my belongings in a hotel room are safe. Although reports surface occasionally about housekeeping staff stealing guests’ belongings, I believe that most of them are honest and just trying to make a living.
What about other guests though, or people not even staying at the hotel?
According to ABC News, GMA sent a a safety and security expert on an undercover assignment, to see how easy it was to steal items from a hotel room.
The video is a bit shocking, showing how smoothly the “criminal” is able to pilfer not only items laying out in the room but also right from a locked safe. The undercover guy even manages to boost the car belonging to the “victim”, all in an astonishingly short period of time.
Click here to check out the video.
The chance of something this drastic happening are pretty small, but I thought the video was interesting to watch.
Obviously, if someone went so far as to steal your car you’d get the police involved and hotel security tapes would be reviewed but surely that is not how you’d want to spend your time. Smaller items that go missing could be trickier to trace.
Sometimes I do run back in my room for a minute to grab something when housekeeping is in there, and most readers know you aren’t supposed to verbally say your name and room number out loud in case someone else is within earshot. Usually the hotel will ask to see an ID if they provide you with another key or accompany you to the room, but not always.
What do you think about the video? Does it make you rethink where you leave items such as a valet stub in your hotel room?
I recently stayed at a very nice Waldorf Astoria. One of the people in our group had $300 cash stolen from his room. It was hidden with his clothes in a drawer. Certainly not a good idea to leave cash in your room, but at a resort of that caliber I would not expect that.
I’m surprised to hear that, Fred Garvin and I’m sure you were too (as it was in a high end hotel). If the cash bundle had been laying on top of a dresser it would have been easier and more tempting to swipe but being hidden in a drawer, it seems to me that whoever took it must have spent a lot of time in there to find it. $300 is a lot of cash, and I hope the hotel at least checked out the security tapes and spoke with anyone that went in the room to see if they could figure out what happened.