I’ve never heard (until this thread) of “hotel thieves.” The housekeepers are a risk, but it’s pretty minimal in my estimation. Hotel rooms seem harder to break into then my home. (all that glass, etc). The doors and locks seem pretty secure, and they often restrict elevator access to people with room keys. The only theft from luggage I’m aware of is someone took my daughter’s wallet out of her carry-on bag in the overhead compartment on a flight to Italy. Lesson learned.
This depends on what hotel you’re staying at, and it also assumes that you remembered to fully close the door so that it locked shut on your way out. Some doors are better than others at fully closing and latching without deliberate action by the user.
For some eye-opening YouTube videos, look at talks by Deviant Ollam at various conferences. He is a physical security guy, and watching him bypass many kinds of public doors, including hotel doors, is disturbing. He covers the TSA locks as well as other things like elevator locks (fire keys) and those access control panels at apartment complexes.
I think your best bet is to be the one whose stuff looks just that much more difficult to get than the other guy’s stuff, in the same vein as “I don’t have to outrun the bear, I just have to outrun the other guy”
Those TSA-approved locks are essentially worthless. You can purchase TSA masterkeys on Amazon and elsewhere, and even if you don’t have one you can pick that lock with a paperclip.
As for hotel room safes:
“This is the Lockpicking Lawyer, and I just got back from a trip to Home Depot…”
Stranger
So what if this guy or the “lockpicking lawyer” can break into a hotel room or a hotel room safe? Few thieves are going to have that level of expertise, so I expect my stuff will generally be safe even left out in my hotel room.
“that level of expertise” is basically watching a few YouTube videos and spending an hour or so playing around with a paperclip or clothshanger to ‘master’ the technique. While it is true that thieves prefer prey on people who leave their wallets or electronics completely unsecured rather than become expert pickpockets or apply bypass techniques to defeat a lock, the reality is that hotel security is a complete joke, and the hotel will not take any responsibility for things stolen from your room or vehicle even if they are obviously responsible for it, i.e. provided a keycard to someone who fooled the clerk or your car was parked in their valet parking.
Stranger
I think you’re probably right that hotel are not as secure as they’d like us to believe (and that they don’t take responsibility for their shortcomings) I have to think theft from hotel rooms is an exceedingly rare occurrence. I can easily imagine assaults, etc., due to lax security, but I have never heard a first-person story of valuables being taken from a hotel room (especially from the safe).
I have TSA locks and use them during the flight. Or really, my husband uses them. I don’t see the point because the luggage is worth more than the contents. All that’s in there are some used not particularly expensive clothes and shoes. We sometimes use a hotel safe for cash , passports or if we are leaving wallets behind.
My husband once lost a lot of cash because he was so foolish as to carry it in a zippered sling bag he had around his body (he didn’t tell me he was doing this, or I would have tried to stop him). This happened in a large, mostly-empty courtyard area of the Louvre in Paris, where we were descended upon by a pack of girls who neatly got the stuff out of the bag while distracting him and then as quickly ran away. This is a well-known thing, and one of the reasons Rick Steves recommends a money belt under your clothes for your valuables when in Europe.
In San Francisco, tourists routinely ignore advice not to carry stuff around in their cars, and just as routinely lose their stuff. This is also a well-known thing. It makes me wish people had more sense, just for the reputation of the city I live in.
Having said those things, I am of the mind set that theft, when you are not present, is not likely either from airplane luggage areas or from hotel rooms. I don’t quite know why, but neither has ever happened to either of us, in 50+ years of traveling. We routinely use the hotel room safe, just for a little peace of mind.
I used to watch videos of the lock-picking lawyer on YouTube, which convinced me that a real cracksman can open anything, so I just content myself with the knowledge that a real cracksman would not come after such small potatoes as we are.
I posted two examples personally known to me above–one was our hotel room, one was four colleagues.
My very favorite ‘style’ of travel was to emerging nations (a/k/a “Third World” countries), staying at pretty low-end (“Backpacker”) hotels, but not hostels or dormitory style rooms.
I usually had enough TSA-approved padlocks to secure the zippers on my backpack and a cable lock that I could loop through a padlock and around a metal bed frame rail or equivalent.
Of course, somebody can take a box cutter/utility knife and slit your bag open, but my approach kept honest people honest.
On a month-long Peru trip, my friend used one of these:
[It’s a steel cable web that envelops your backpack and can be secured to something stationary]
Which guaranteed that my bag was a better target than his 
Still … no issues.
In ‘nicer’ hotels? Nothing. Never. I traveled for work – probably 75%+ time – for about 3yrs and never locked anything up. The only theft I ever encountered was when I was stupid enough to leave a leather jacket on the back of a chair and a recent purchase from a high-end department store underneath that chair, ever-so briefly, at the bar/club atop the InterContinental Hotel at the Houston Galleria in Texas.
Prompting no end of Texans to implore me “not to judge Texas by Houston”
Acknowledged. I should have said “outside of this thread.” I don’t dispute it happens, but it seems quite rare. My wife is always worried about such things, so we use the hotel safe, but no locks on our luggage.
I read someplace that some thieves know which cars to target by using a Bluetooth scanner to identify electronics that the owners have left in the trunk, thinking they’re well hidden.
Which is why tourists shouldn’t leave their stuff in the car. If it’s too unwieldy to carry around with you, leave it someplace safer, like your hotel room.
I also understand that thieves are able to recognize likely rental cars, and frequent areas where tourists park, because tourists’ cars are the fruitiest targets.
I have seen some use a rain cover over their backpack while walking thru crowded streets (when it’s not raining). Sure, someone can slice thru it and into the backpack, but that’s unlikely. More likely is someone opening a zipper and taking whatever is in that pocket, and even a flimsy rain cover deters that.
I use these for some travel, as well as other Pacsafe products. They’re a little heavier, but very useful.
Some of those zipper solutions are pretty clever (and some seem a bit fussy, but I guess it depends on what you’re carrying). I like that they talk about deterrence rather than prevention.
I like that many of the fasteners are hard to undo with one hand and include places to add locks. My Pacsafe waist pack is terrific for cities and public transit–slash-proof cable in the strap, slash-proof panel in the front, locking zippers, and it locks around your waist.
Good to know. If I can’t determine that my locks are TSA-compliant, then I’ll make sure not to use them if I ever fly out of the US. (However, at least some of my suitcases are from American brands like Samsonite and American Tourister, so I suppose their locks are probably TSA-compliant even if they weren’t marketed as such in Europe where I bought them.)
see that red element? That’s the TSA lock symbol.
