Hotel safes are WAY too vulnerable (do this instead)

Hello from Jakarta, Indonesia! In a previous video, I shared why I don't use hotel safes for my most important items (i.e. my passport & cash) and in this video, I share, in a hotel I'm staying at now, the PROOF that hotel safes are a joke... and what I do instead).

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TIMELINE + LINKS
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0:00 - Intro

0:24 - Hotel Room Safe: Expectation

0:48 - REALITY of Hotel Safes

1:04 - Breaking in (easily) lol

1:38 - What I Use Instead

2:14 - Real Life Result

2:34 - The Whole Point...

3:13 - Are YOU Ready for Travel?
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I said it in a previous video but I want to be perfectly clear. I am a firm believer that most humans on earth are good - and that includes hotel employees.

For me, I'm just about mitigating unnecessary risk, and IF you happen to be very-rarely targeted by a very-rare bad hotel employee or anyone else that gains access to your hotel room, chances are, the hotel room safe is the first place they'd look (especially if they know the safe's superuser code-breaking system).

The chances of being targeted in any hotel you stay at have got to be less than 1%. But for me, knowing that in the super rare event my hotel room is targeted, the time it would take to rifle through every conceivable hiding spot AFTER failing to find anything of value in the hotel room safe just enables me to TRULY enjoy myself exploring when I'm away from the hotel.

#Travel #TravelHack #Safety

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DISCLAIMERS:

Some of the links above have an affiliate code, if you purchase gear with these links I will receive a small commission at no additional cost to you.

Unless explicitly stated, this video was not paid for by outside persons or companies. This means that the content of this video and my opinions are 100% my own, and were not vetted or paid for by any third party.

[edbennett]

Thank you for this information. For some reason my code was changed in my hotel. I could not believe that I forgot my password. My hotel charges 100 dollars to open the safe if a guest forgets
his or her password. In order to avoid this charge, I searched youtube and found your video. Your steps helped me open the hotel safe with no problem. According to a TV news report, 60 percent of these hotel safe thefts are caused by the hotel employees.

[ropro]

Great tip on the room safe! Did not know that! However, with the curtain crease hiding spot, tbh, I'd be too worried about leaving my passport behind when I checked out. 😆

[carterhayes]

Excellent thinking outside the box! I just did two weeks in Thailand and came up with another effective technique, I opted to keep my stack of cash hidden inside the room safe. I did it by using magnets to securely hold the cash to the inside top of the box, when you slide it all the way up against the front it's virtually impossible to see, especially if the safe is mounted at waist level. I left a couple hundred dollars in small bills in the safe in plain sight as a decoy but the main stash was totally hidden from staff and lady visitors while still being easily accessible to me. I was also thinking about mounting a hidden spy camera aimed at the safe to capture a thief in action

[LuisC-gu]

Thanks for the tip on how easy they open the oh, thanks for teaching every hotel employee to search in other places too...

[RafaRodriguezOfficial]

Another trick: hang the do not disturb sign when you leave the room. Everyone will assume you're napping inside

[hjewkes]

SLPT: Alternatively, enter super user mode and change the super user password. Now its your safe

[loridoyle]

I get the comments about now those few bad actors know where to look, but I appreciate this so much! I didn’t know how easy it was to break into those mini safes, so I’ll be looking around the room for an equally hidden place for those few valuables i might be leaving in my room. Thanks again for a great video!

[gebe]

Hotel GM since many years here, I have never heard of this.... I will be certainly checking it. Thanks for the tip about checking the curtains also, lol...

[cherylchoudhary]

Two things: if you are afraid you will forget your passport when you leave, whether in the safe or in another spot, set an alarm on your phone. Second, hotel employees are usually not stealing things, but when the rooms are open for cleaning, they aren't checking IDs for anyone that comes back to the room. That is a bigger threat to your belongings.
Love the safe demo! Now everyone is going to be recoding safes! 🤣

[yuckfoo]

Thank You Maurice, I did not know this, and it is excellent info for all of us who travel abroad.

[chrisholland]

I use to hide stuff then I realised I've got more chance of losing things than someone stealing it so I just put them in the safe, sometimes this moment of realisation came when I lost 6x spurs v Cardiff away tickets and nearly had 5 angry mates.... tickets were found 35 twisted minutes later in my pillow case "where would drunk Chris hide them"....

[Stixenterprise]

If you are staying only a night or two, follow his suggestion, place the Do not disturb sign, and contact the front desk to skip cleaning for the duration or for the next day.
Layered security will provide peace of mind.
Otherwise, use a body wallet to keep your passport and your c.c. in under your clothes.

[dawnmcelligott]

Holy wow! Thank you for the information, next time I fly out of country, I will definitely rethink the safe….

[GMAG]

The smart thing to do is if you are going to leave your valuables inside the hotel room safe, put the 'do not desturb' sign on your outside doorknob before leaving. When you want your room cleaned, take your valubles with you for the day and return later to put them back in the safe once the cleaning staff are done cleaning your room.

[TDtog]

Thanks for telling everyone how to break into a hotel safe. Genius 👏👏👏👏👏👏

[Kennybooy]

At the Hilton, cleaners dust the curtains daily and open them again making sure they are evenly spread. Would they not find this

[kanadiankorner]

The safe info is absolutely wild. Yikes! I've often wondered about what YouTubers do to safeguard valuables. A whole video about this would be amazing (not sure if you've previously posted something comprehensive). What about laptops and camera gear? Any tips for securing those valuables? Feels almost impossible in some respect.

[chinaman]

I still use hotel room safes. But I always take a video and/or photo of all the items I have placed in the safe. In the event that someone decides to open up my safe and take my things. I will have actual proof that I have things in there.

[gailsfoodandstuff]

wow, this video is over 2 years ago, but it deserves millions of views, not just 346, 075 as of march 20, 2025. great info! not sure why this popped up for me, i have not searched anything hotels or safes, etc. but great info just the same.

[smurf]

Didn’t know that but I suspected there was something like this available when 200 euros were stolen from our room safe on our last day