I was replying to the OP, not to the other folks who bring expensive gadgets.
The housekeeping staff has a key to your room and a legitimate reason to be there, do you worry about them?
Beach bags. If you are at a resort/hotel, find your lounge chairs and lay your towels over them. We then keep our flip flops and beach bags under the lounge chairs, or shoes on top of the towel.
I also make sure that what I keep in the beach bag is not of value, so I don’t miss it too bad incase of theft.
One time I accidentally locked mysef out of a hotel room, as long as I could answer the front desk’s questions, I had no problem getting a new card key with out showing identification.
But the housekeeping staff hasn’t proven themselves to be thieves already by stealing my room key in the first place, right?
Me neither, but I do order from the poolside waiter. If someone overheard me giving the waiter my room number, they’d be in like Flynn. Though, FTR, I always lock my valuables in the room safe. I mean, why wouldn’t you use the safe? They can have my makeup.
My point is that most theft isn’t a crime of opportunity, it’s planned. It won’t be someone grabbing a purse in broad daylight not knowing who it belongs to.
At the gym that I go to, there’s a big board on the wall with a bunch of hooks right after you come in; most people hang their car keys on this when they come in so that they don’t need to deal with them while working out. Many a time I’ve thought; geez, how easy is it to pick some random keys from the rack, walk outside, press the button & walk toward the “chirp chirp”. Literally I could be in another state by the time someone finished their workout & realized their keys weren’t on the board. For less than $5, I went to the hardware store & had a generic key for my car made. It’ll unlock the doors but won’t start the car. I usually lock the real key locked in the glove compartment.
Not only does it make it look like a car too cheap to have a remote (read undesirable) but because there’s no logo on the key, you’d have to go car to car trying to find which one it fits into. Some people probably wouldn’t even realize it’s a car key. Yes, I realize it’s not totally foolproof, but I’ve made most other keys/cars much easier marks.
This could work if you’re driving to said water park rather than staying at a resort.
First of all, I’d like to see a cite for your claim that most thefts are planned. I actually highly doubt that most thefts are committed by career thieves.
Besides, who cares what MOST thefts are? If you want to protect your things from BOTH career thieves and opportunistic thieves, you should take a bit of care about protecting your valuables.