“It is a major problem,” says Madeline Lee Bryer, a Manhattan attorney who has represented victims of hotel muggings, including a businesswoman from Canada who suffered a broken jaw in a push-in robbery at New York’s Paramount Hotel eight years ago; the attacker was later caught and sent to jail, and Bryer sued the hotel for failing to provide adequate protection. (The suit was settled; Paramount did not respond to requests for comment.) Bryer says that hotels don’t see security as a “moneymaking proposition” because there’s little advantage to be gained by raising a subject that would only stir negative feelings on the part of their customers. “They want people to be lulled into this false sense they’re in the protective arms of this pleasant environment,” she adds.  

Of course, that is exactly why thieves prey on hotel guests; it’s hard to imagine a more tempting target than a group of people uprooted from their familiar surroundings, trying to relax or distracted by travel hassles, many of them carrying valuables. The hotel industry, for its part, says they address security, but discreetly. “A lot of hotels added more security after 9/11; it is just that many customers don’t see it,” says Joe McInerney, head of the American Hotel & Lodging Association in Washington. With a few exceptions, such as Las Vegas’ Bellagio, where guards inspect your key before you enter an elevator, hotels prefer their security to be invisible. Common measures include posting security cameras in more locations, especially in corridors and near elevators; positioning uniformed and plainclothes security guards in public areas and at entrances, and performing more intensive background checks on employees. (Electronic key cards have made it harder for unauthorized persons to enter guest rooms but doesn’t necessarily protect against inside jobs.)

“You don’t want consumers to think they are in an armed camp,” McInerney says.

Travelers are often surprised by the lack of sympathy they encounter when they report a crime. Jane Eccles, an artist who was traveling last year with her consultant husband, says she was rebuffed when several hundred dollars worth of jewelry was stolen from her room at a conference center in Princeton, New Jersey. The couple had packed their bags and left them in the room while they grabbed breakfast in the dining room. When Eccles opened her suitcase shortly after leaving the property, she discovered the theft and immediately contacted the hotel, but was told there was no evidence that anyone other than the guests had entered the room. “They said they were covered, and that was it,” Eccles says.

Bryer says that most state laws appear to back the lodging industry in disclaiming responsibility for theft. Moreover, some hotel sources say that if they were always to accept their guests’ versions of events, they could open themselves to a wave of false claims and insurance fraud.

Some hotels are making security a priority; Marriott is introducing automatic dead bolts at many of its properties and has a policy of investigating “any and all thefts” against guests, says Roger Conner, a spokesman for the chain. He claims these measures and the secure keys have dramatically reduced guest-room theft, although he would not provide actual figures. We might be left in the dark, but avoid being left in the lurch with these tips on security.