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Where should you keep your valuables when staying at hotel?

Use the safe: Most hotel rooms have a safe where guests can store their valuables. Be sure to set a unique passcode that only you know. Keep valuables with you: If you have small valuables that you don't want to leave in the safe, consider keeping them with you in a bag or purse.



The safest place to keep your valuables in a hotel is the in-room electronic safe, but even this requires a strategic approach. While most guests use the safe for passports and extra cash, it is a good idea to place your items inside a small bag or envelope within the safe to prevent small items from being overlooked when you check out. If you are staying in a high-end five-star hotel, you can also request to use the main hotel safe behind the front desk, which often has higher security and insurance coverage than the individual room units. For items that don't fit in a safe, like a laptop, placing them in a locked hardshell suitcase is a strong secondary deterrent. Avoid "obvious" hiding spots like under the mattress or in the back of the closet, as these are the first places a thief would look. In 2026, many travelers also use "travel door alarms" or portable safes that can be tethered to fixed furniture. Ultimately, the best policy is to minimize the amount of jewelry and high-value items you bring in the first place, relying on digital backups for your travel documents and IDs.

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Some of the most commonly stolen items from hotel rooms include robes and slippers. While slippers are usually okay to take back home with you, those plushy soft robes are not, and travelers can expect an extra charge on their credit card.

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Towels are the most common item stolen from hotel rooms, and you can understand why. Most hotels provide incredibly soft, luxurious and comforting towels that just feel so good wrapped around your body.

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Here's a quick reminder to prevent hotel thefts.
  1. Don't travel with your valuable jewelry, aka expensive, sentimental diamond earrings.
  2. Don't leave items just laying around your room – jewelry, technology, computers, notebooks, cameras, even receipts (think identity theft).
  3. When you leave make sure your door is locked.


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While hotel room safes might not be the most secure — hotel employees generally have access to them without needing the code — they're better than leaving your valuables out in the open. Before leaving your room for the day, lock up your jewelry and don't forget the code.

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Generally, hotels do their best to maintain a fair lost and found policy. Although hotels don't have the space to store stuff indefinitely, they also don't want to disappoint customers by throwing away items before they've had a chance to retrieve them.

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Look for a place in your hotel room where people wouldn`t think that it would be there, like under the TV or at the edge of the carpet. When the edge of the carpet can be pulled up and it is covered by furniture, people will not notice it there. When you get back after a day out, make sure to check on it immediately.

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What You Cannot Take From a Hotel Room. Guests often take towels, irons, hairdryers, pillows, and blankets, according to the housekeeping department at Hilton Kingston. Cable boxes, clock radios, paintings, ashtrays, light bulbs, TV remote controls—even the Bible—are commonly stolen as well.

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Leave the used towels in the tub Markham-Bagnera puts all the towels on the bathtub, especially if they're still wet. That way they're out of the way and all together in the pile. And the room attendant only has to pick up one pile of dirty linen. “It makes it a lot faster to pick up,” Markham-Bagnera says.

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Rarely. You might be surprised, if you've never worked in a hotel, just how so. Even the dumbest room attendant knows that whatever the temptation, if it happens, the guest will say something right away as soon as he or she notices the item missing, and there's always a record of who cleaned which room.

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One expert estimated that every day in a big-city hotel, there's at least one crime committed—and it's almost always theft.

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THEY KNOW. According to a Miami-based company called Linen Tracking Technology, a lot of hotels stitch tiny microchips into their towels, robes, pillowcases, cloth napkins and other linens. The LinenTracker chips are currently being used in over 2,000 hotels--but don't ask which ones.

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THEY KNOW. According to a Miami-based company called Linen Tracking Technology, a lot of hotels stitch tiny microchips into their towels, robes, pillowcases, cloth napkins and other linens. The LinenTracker chips are currently being used in over 2,000 hotels--but don't ask which ones.

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First, contact the front desk and explain what happened. Make sure to provide as much detail as possible about what was taken and when it went missing. The staff should be able to investigate further and help you get your items back if they were indeed stolen by a hotel employee.

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