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Hotel safety tips from a former intelligence officer

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Re: Hotel safety tips from a former intelligence officer

#61

Post by interactivecode »

SwiftyBug wrote: post #40
hackish wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Standard hotel rooms don’t have many hiding places that won’t be eventually apparent to an intruder with time or a knowledgeable hotel employee. Considering this, I think ideal locations would be within objects that can’t simply be flipped over or moved to discover your secrets. For example, you might hide your cash or documents in between a framed print and its backboard. You might open the room safe and reset it to…

I thought you shouldn't leave your passport in the hotel room. Shouldn't we be carrying our passports at all times while traveling abroad, as it is the only valid identification on us? I never worried about where to leave the passport because it's always with me in a money belt inside my pants.

yes you are required to have it on you at all times, it's not just for border crossings. It's the only valid id outside of your own country.

Re: Hotel safety tips from a former intelligence officer

#62

Post by schoen »

SwiftyBug wrote: post #40
hackish wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Standard hotel rooms don’t have many hiding places that won’t be eventually apparent to an intruder with time or a knowledgeable hotel employee. Considering this, I think ideal locations would be within objects that can’t simply be flipped over or moved to discover your secrets. For example, you might hide your cash or documents in between a framed print and its backboard. You might open the room safe and reset it to…

I thought you shouldn't leave your passport in the hotel room. Shouldn't we be carrying our passports at all times while traveling abroad, as it is the only valid identification on us? I never worried about where to leave the passport because it's always with me in a money belt inside my pants.

I've been told to carry a photocopy of your passport. If you're stopped by police and they insist on seeing the real thing for some reason (like to check your visa), you can tell them what hotel you're staying at and they can take you back there to get it.

While police might be annoyed by this, you may be unlikely to encounter a situation in which it's necessary at all, and it probably won't endanger you unless you're in a place where police habitually try to extort foreigners, in which case it could provide a new pretext for extortion.

The best advice probably varies by country, depending on local crime patterns and also on the attitudes of local authorities to visitors (or to visitors like you).

Re: Hotel safety tips from a former intelligence officer

#63

Post by schoen »

interactivecode wrote: post #61
SwiftyBug wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought you shouldn't leave your passport in the hotel room. Shouldn't we be carrying our passports at all times while traveling abroad, as it is the only valid identification on us? I never worried about where to leave the passport because it's always with me in a money belt inside my pants.

yes you are required to have it on you at all times, it's not just for border crossings. It's the only valid id outside of your own country.

But not every country requires people to carry IDs at all times, and even countries that do may not punish tourists for having some other form of ID plus a willingness to retrieve their passports if necessary.

Re: Hotel safety tips from a former intelligence officer

#65

Post by xtajv »

nextlevelwizard wrote: post #30
jamisteven wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 2010 I was working at a large hotel / convention center in Nashville, at about 8pm we were preparing for a massive event where a company had bought out one of the venues, the entire hotel was booked solid. In the days prior to this, we had torrential downpours and heavy rain but this was normal, until it wasnt. Out of nowhere we get reports that the underground tunnels in the hotel used for employees to get around…

How often does this happen? Once in a life time? This is the kind of stuff that makes you go nutty. Of course you _can_ try to prepare for everything and anything, but does it actually make sense to worry about being in a flash flood like that? I doubt it.

"I don't have to worry about $PARTICULAR_DISASTER_SCENARIO because I've already precomputed a strategy for that scenario by ruminating about it."

!=

"I don't have to worry about $PARTICULAR_DISASTER_SCENARIO because I'm generally organized and well-situated above a certain threshold: If you picked a random disaster scenario $x out of a hat, chances are pretty good that I'd already be equipped to handle it."

P.S. Not trying to "counter-argue", just sharing a different perspective.

Re: Hotel safety tips from a former intelligence officer

#66

Post by midoridensha »

jraby3 wrote: post #19
esperent wrote: post #3

Kind of cool to read but these are not any tips that a normal (non-paranoid) person will need to follow unless they are traveling to some seriously dangerous locations. Except maybe the tip not to use the hotel safe or leave money under the mattress, those are good. But do normal people really need to write their name down on pieces of paper and pass them across the desk with a wink to avoid their name being said out…

He doesn’t mention where you should keep your valuables. It’s easy to say where not to, but then offer a suggestion for a safe place to store stuff like a passport or cash.

>It’s easy to say where not to, but then offer a suggestion for a safe place to store stuff like a passport or cash.

Simple: you keep those things on your person whenever you're away from your hotel room. Use a "traveler's wallet" which hides under your clothes. You should never be without your passport in a foreign country; it's generally illegal and it's the only way to properly identify you.

Re: Hotel safety tips from a former intelligence officer

#67

Post by raverbashing »

parker_mountain wrote: post #15
tomcam wrote: post #5

> I find the fire escape plan, and I follow it. Yeah, actually try this sometime. I do this regularly and it's amazing how often floors are locked from the stairwell, and more than once I have found floors skipped--you take the 4rth floor stairwell down and end up in a basement kitchen or something. Also he neglects to mention in the "Book online" section that it's always safer to book directly from the hotel website…

> These days their prices are competitive or better than the aggregation sites, and with better terms I travel extensively for work, and this is simply not true. Literally last week, I saved $40 by booking through hoteltonight in Chicago. Once you get close to the date of the stay, prices become squirrely and weird. This is definitely true if you're booking more than two weeks in advance, though.

I just wouldn't bother with "cheaphotels dot com" or some random aggregator for a small discount

Besides not wanting another random website having my data, the chance of misbookings is high. Hotwire/Priceline models might actually give cheaper bookings or when you can have a less flexible booking/prepaying for example.

The discount models hotels use are fixed, there's no magic in a random website giving you a discount.

Re: Hotel safety tips from a former intelligence officer

#68

Post by nextlevelwizard »

pengaru wrote: post #54
nextlevelwizard wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How often does this happen? Once in a life time? This is the kind of stuff that makes you go nutty. Of course you _can_ try to prepare for everything and anything, but does it actually make sense to worry about being in a flash flood like that? I doubt it.

The orientation section doesn't seem incredibly inconvenient nor costly. It's basically just establishing situational awareness in an unfamiliar place. What are you getting kept from by doing it? A dozen extra minutes of terrible hotel TV? On the topic of flash floods esp. when traveling; I make a conscious effort to not park/stay anywhere liable to flash-flood, and that requires some situational awareness in the sen…

>What are you getting kept from by doing it? A dozen extra minutes of terrible hotel TV?

I don't go to a hotel to be in my room. If I am traveling there is a reason to do so.

All in all I think this paranoid fear of hotels and travel is something specific to US. I've never had issues with security in a hotel or even given it a a thought. In normal world you don't need to worry about this kind of stuff.

My biggest worry in hotel rooms these days is how to rig the A/C to stay on while I'm out.

Re: Hotel safety tips from a former intelligence officer

#69

Post by thorin »

SwiftyBug wrote: post #40
hackish wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Standard hotel rooms don’t have many hiding places that won’t be eventually apparent to an intruder with time or a knowledgeable hotel employee. Considering this, I think ideal locations would be within objects that can’t simply be flipped over or moved to discover your secrets. For example, you might hide your cash or documents in between a framed print and its backboard. You might open the room safe and reset it to…

I thought you shouldn't leave your passport in the hotel room. Shouldn't we be carrying our passports at all times while traveling abroad, as it is the only valid identification on us? I never worried about where to leave the passport because it's always with me in a money belt inside my pants.

Every I've been at a reasonable hotel with a safe I've left my passport in the safe and I've also had a copy of it somewhere on my person or luggage. I also emailed a scan of it to myself. I've travelled a bit around all the continents going back to mid 90s.

The biggest issue I had when I got my passport stolen in Costa Rica was not getting my British temporary passport reissued, that was relatively straightforward. It was waiting in line to get an ESTA to transit the US on the return flight. Felt sorry for all the local guys in line to get their document processed. It was annoying because I didn't want to leave the airport in Florida or wherever I was transiting.

I remember in Nepal kayaking and basically taking all of our valuables on my body while on the river as we weren't sure we'd ever see our bus/driver again. This suspicion was actually proved valid when our bus was subjected to a minor terrorist attack!

Re: Hotel safety tips from a former intelligence officer

#70

Post by Scoundreller »

chrisseaton wrote: post #36
Shank wrote: post #7

Rather than a doorstop, I usually prefer a super grip lock [0] -- an extremely corny as-seen-on-TV product that you can lash around a door knob that uses simple physics to make the door impossible to open with the key on the other side. Naomi Wu mentioned this and Deviant Ollam has too. The basic premise is that it's less destructive than most "security door stops" and hotels tend to get angry if you destroy their ca…

Seems like it requires an extremely particular design of door handles that I’ve never actually seen in a hotel.

Yeah, globe shaped doorknobs are on their way out in general because they’re less accessible for people with disabilities/weak grip.

Globes are better for keeping intelligent cars/dogs/children where you want them though.

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