I've been reading everyone's security tips for travelling in Spain. Whilst not trying to be too paranoid about security, I think I need to be sensible about walking home in the evening from the restaurant to the hotel and leave my valuables in the hotel safe.
Are the "in-room" safes OK or can they be tampered with? I also read that I may need to give my passport to the hotellier. is this true?

Hotels often need to record your passport information and may hold it for a very short period.
I don't carry so many valuables that I have to lock them up somewhere. All safes are manufactured with a master key/code, which is available to hotel staff. Perhaps a safe at reception would be better since it would be trickier for someone to enter it unseen. I imagine that the majority of people don't suffer any breakins of their room safe, however.

Tampered with? Numerous hotel employees can open the safe in the room, as they do every day when people forget their 'secret code'. Better to bring your own safe with you.

Hi

I normally use the safe in the room if there is one. I figure that it is safer to keep stuff there compared to carrying everything around in large cities. I have never experienced that something has gotten stolen from the safe

Regards
Gard
http://gardkarlsen.com - trip reports and pictures

As absent-minded as I can be, I will never again leave anything in a hotel safe. I did that in Heidelberg and forgot to get my items from the desk until I was too far away to go back and get them. After much fussing at myself, I realized I could just have them sent to Prien am Chiemsee, where I was staying for a month.

I just keep my extra debit card, extra credit card and passport in my moneybelt at all times.

Our son did 'lose' money from a reception safe in a Thai hotel once but I really think that was the exception. My own preference is for in room safes which allow the setting of your own code. Very common in Spain.
Yes your hotel may wish to retain your passport for a short time. Again, very common in Spain, nothing to worry about.

I have messed up the settings for an in-room safe where you set the code, and the hotel staff came around and opened it for me. Maybe there are only a few people with the power - it's hard to know.

I don't think you need to give your passport to the hotelier for the duration of your stay. You may need to allow the hotelier to get the details of your passport - I can't remember if Spain is like Italy in that respect or not.

As others have mentioned, you do need to give the hotel your passport details; these are taken on check-in, and that is it.

As for in-room safes.... The staff can open them, however, I'd imagine that the staff who enter your room daily i.e. maids, do not have the power to open them (at least not officially). I've always used them to store cash, passports, and other valuables, and have never had any problems. One hotel I stayed at in Spain actually informed me that they were insured up to a certain amount, and if I had anything of a greated value, then to keep it in the hotel's own safe. So I would say that you have nothing to worry about.

Wipe the keypad clean and to make this even easier later on give it a light spray from something like hairspray, furniture polish, etc.

Joe Tourist puts in his 4 digit pin code say 1,2,3,4 and leaves for the day.

Later Jane Maid can either just blow some talcum power on the keypad or use a flashlight to find the 4 numbers that Joe touched.

I would have to write them down but a person with a decent memory won't have too.

Anyway just write down the numbers starting at 1234, 1243, 1324, 1342, 1423, 1432 and the next column start at '2' 2134, 2143, etc.

In the end you'll have 4 columns each with 6 number sets and 1 set out of 24 is the combination.

There are different odds for pins like 1124 or 1112.
Regards, Walter

I once had to have an in-room safe opened by "the staff" everyone here keeps referring to.

That individual was the manager who had to retrieve a list of codes out of the hotel's safe. The code number for each safe in each room was different.

I have never had anything taken out of an in-room safe; I suspect that the hotel probably wouldn't be responsible if there were a theft but I continue to use them.

Hi S,

The in-room safes are slightly better than leaving your valuables in your luggage.

They will not stop a professional thief.

What valuables are you planning on putting in it?

Some of the safes we've used recently require a credit card swipe rather than entering in 4 numbers. Of course, this means you have to keep that credit card with you. We tend to use an expired credit card--it still works for the safes and if anyone happens to steal it while we're out an about, well, they can't go on a shopping spree with it.
Generally, I trust the in-room safes to the same degree that I trust the hotel. I have a pretty high level of confidence in the hotels that we stay at in Vienna and Baden-Baden, Germany--we've been staying in those same hotels for years and never had any suspicious incident anywhere in the hotels. If we're planning to stay in new hotels in new destinations, then we're more prudent. When we made our first visit to Krakow last year, for example, we left some valuables behind in the hotel safe at the Kaiserin Elisabeth in Vienna (we were going back to Vienna after Krakow).

We did have a problem with the combination at the Kleine Prinz hotel in BB, it just wouldn't open for us. Only the manager had the over-ride code and we had to wait for him to come back from an appointment somewhere. So although we couldn't get to our stuff, we felt pretty confident that nobody else could either. It definitely was NOT the case that "everyone" working in the hotel could access the safe--we had the assistant manager, concierge and various other staff members hovering helplessly around when we couldn't get our combination to work.

I wouldn't put the crown jewels in a hotel room safe, but, knock wood, they've been ok for holding our digital cameras, laptop, a few bits of jewelry, wallets, passports. As they said in Ocean's 11, hotel safes are for "grandmother's pearls" (or mine). Anything more valuable and it probably shouldn't come with you.

There are actually room safes in some hotels that charge a fee when you use them.

I'm sorry but I disagree with Ira that the in-room safe is only "slightly better" than hiding things in your personal belongings.

I say this because I think anything which slows a thief down is a LOT better than something which doesn't.
But perhaps we are talking semantics and degrees of things here.

I usually store my valuables (passport, extra money and credit cards) in my suitcase and close it with a locker, and put the suitcase inside the closet. I never had anything stolen this way.

Hi Dukey,

>I think anything which slows a thief down is a LOT better than something which doesn't.

Hmmm. If it slows a thief a little does it help a lot?

If you are out of your room for several hours, and it slows the thief a lot does it help a little?

>But perhaps we are talking semantics and degrees of things here.<

Yup.

When I saw this thread I thought it was the one I posted a couple of years ago, using the exact same witty title. ;-)

http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...p;tid=34518639