When you stay at a hotel, do you place your belongings and valuables in the in-room safe, or do you not bother using it? I’m curious to hear the varying approaches that people take. I’ll share my take below, as I’m starting to realize that I might just be in the minority…
Using a hotel safe is no doubt a best practice
Just objectively speaking, placing your valuables in the in-room safe at a hotel is a best practice, and it has several benefits. On the most basic level, it provides the best protection you can get for your personal belongings compared to just leaving them in the room otherwise.
Admittedly it’s also worth considering how many valuables you’re traveling with. If you have expensive jewelry or a lot of cash, then you absolutely should put everything in a safe. However, if you’re like me and rarely have anything valuable with you, then I think there’s less point to doing so.
There are some other benefits to using the safe as well, though. For example, it’s helpful in terms of keeping track of belongings, since you can place your most valuable things in one place in the room, rather than having them scattered around.
So if someone asks me if they should use the hotel safe or not, I think objectively it’s advisable. That being said, maybe I’m just a maverick who likes to live dangerously, but I almost never use a hotel safe.
Why I don’t usually use the in-room hotel safe
It’s interesting how polarizing use of hotel safes can be. Going back a decade, I had basically never used a hotel safe before. I actually didn’t realize at the time that many people use them religiously, as it never occurred to me to do so.
Nowadays I have more mixed feelings on in-room safes. When I’m traveling alone, I generally don’t use safes. Meanwhile when I travel with Ford, he uses them every single time for basically all of his valuables, so when we’re traveling together, I figure I might as well throw my stuff in there as well.
I will say that where I’m traveling also factors into whether I use the safe, assuming I’m alone. If a place is known for having a particularly high crime rate, I might be more likely to use the safe.
So, why do I believe that using safes is a best practice, but don’t usually do so myself? There are several factors at play:
- I don’t really travel with valuables, aside from some tech gadgets; I rarely have a significant amount of cash or any expensive jewelry, so worst case scenario my passport and credit cards could be stolen, and it’s not like my big laptop fits in most safes anyway
- Most hotels have cameras in the hallways, so it’s not like hotel room theft is that easy; I also usually have the “do not disturb” sign on except brief periods where I get housekeeping, so that eliminates periods where hotel staff may try to enter the room
- Over the years we’ve also seen stories of hotel safes being robbed; after all, someone has the master code for that, and the safes can malfunction
- Speaking of malfunctioning safes, I can’t count the number of times during my travels with Ford that we’ve had issues with getting the safe to work, or even getting the safe to open; I remember one hotel stay a couple of years ago where the safe broke, and they had to drill into it
I guess to sum it up, in-room safe use is one of those areas where I’ll roll the dice, because I don’t view the risk as being terribly substantial. If my credit cards get stolen, fortunately they have great fraud protection. Meanwhile I haven’t heard many stories of housekeepers being involved in passport trafficking rings, so I don’t view that as a major concern. That’s just my take, and that’s not to say others should do the same.
Bottom line
A vast majority of hotels have in-room safes, so that you have somewhere you can place your valuables. Using in-room safes is of course a best practice, especially if you’re traveling with cash or other valuables. However, I can’t say that I actually end up using hotel safes all that much. Up until now that hasn’t been an issue for me… knock on wood.
Do you use hotel safes when traveling? If so, under what circumstances, and what do you put in them?
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