There’s a myriad of security issues associated with vacationing, and despite the common opinion, hotel safes don’t provide as much protection against these risks as widely considered. In this blog entry, the safe installation experts here at SOS Locksmith will detail the main reasons that hotel security safes don’t offer as much protection as is usually assumed.
Widespread Access
The concept of external access means that the more people that can access something, the less secure it is. Hotels own safes, and need to be able to access them for a range of reasons. If a guest forgets their combination, if a guest leaves their belongings in a safe when they check out, or if a safe is broken and requires maintenance, hotel employees will be allowed to access the safe in order to lower their liability. This inherently makes hotel safes far less safe than a privately owned safe.
Obsolete Technology
It would be incredibly expensive for hotels to upgrade safes to the same degree that residential and commercial safes are technologically updated. Due to this simple budgetary issue, most hotel safes are out of date, poorly maintained, and don’t offer the security that most people assume that they do.
Vulnerability to Break-Ins
Hotel room safes are very vulnerable to break-ins. Hotel safes can be easily accessed by criminals using a technique called safe bouncing. This method involves picking up a safe and bouncing it over a surface while turning the lock, which will shock the safe into being unlocked. Electronic safes can also be opened with safe cracking equipment widely and easily available on the darkweb. Many of the consumer-grade safes used by hotels utilize obsolete or outdated locking mechanisms, making them inherently more vulnerable to criminals.
Easy to Locate
Hotel safes are very easily found – in the closet or under television sets next to the microwave. There’s very few areas of a hotel room in which a safe can be well-concealed, and burglars who may get access to your hotel room can find your safe in a single second. This is different than with home or business safes, that can get concealed in walls, under floors, or behind sliding panels for an effective additional security benefit. With hotel safes, besides the highest end hotel rooms, it’s highly likely that your safe will not have anything close to this same benefit of concealment.
