[yesplorer]

This isn't true at all. Luxury hotels, most especially managed or chain brands are some of the safest places in third-world countries.

The odds of buglary, petty crimes and those vices you listed happening is close to zero. This is the reason why they are attractive to expats and high-end clients.

They have the best security and are usually located in prime areas making them less susceptible to some of those claims you made.

And they also have a brand to protect. Except they are very expensive relative to the cost of living of those countries but their target market is foreigners, short-stay expats and government delegations so they still get patronized.

[rdl]

Yeah, you have two choices -- either a high-end international-clientele hotel which also has security, or something relatively anonymous. The other two quadrants (high profile international hotel with no security, or a low-profile guesthouse with a lot of western guests and lots of local information about it) are how to get killed most efficiently.

Big hard property means you'll probably be safe from petty crime, but you might be collateral damage during a large terrorist attack. However, most places can repel the smaller attacks.

Smaller/anonymous property means you won't be collateral damage from anyone else, but it will be a whole lot easier for someone to learn "rich American/European is staying in this guesthouse" and then do a trivial attack. You have to be consistent with this, using local vehicles, probably not going out much, etc.

Depends on the situation which is better (the external situation as well as who you are as a target). A big factor is that K&R/institutional policies/etc. do not permit the low profile approach. If you're living in a low profile place but then taking a big armored truck to/from meetings with the government at hardened sites, you're probably going to have a bad time, too.

I'd personally feel weird being in Afghanistan or Iraq without a weapon (and possibly security detail) today, despite it being "safer" than when I was there, and having illegal weapons being itself an actual risk now. I solve this by just not going.

Most of the third world isn't actual-warzone and you're not as likely to face a huge terrorist attack on the biggest target. The Kenyan mall/etc. attacks are outliers. I'd generally go for the hardened strategy myself, as I don't want to have to go through the trouble of blending in, especially on a longer basis.

(In a high threat environment I'd probably go for my own secured compound somewhere, just so I wouldn't be collateral damage, but that requires you be able to hold/secure the compound, which puts a pretty high minimum scale to be economic. I lived in a villa in Baghdad with Kurdish security, and then in Afghanistan I stayed at a guest house with a 2:1 rifle to guest ratio, but yeah.)

[baybal2]

This is what most Westerner think, but the reality is the opposite.

I'll explain.

Luxury hotels in 3rd world countries are very different from normal hotels. They are "hotels" in name only.

Here, luxury hotels function pretty much like castles and keeps for local "feudal elites." What they do is not so much about providing lodging and comfort, but providing physical security and security from sights of common people to local rich and powerful.

You are totally right that such places are well secured, some even with security walls, barbed wire, and armed guards. But the very fact that such establishments tend to host "walking money bags," or people justly hated by local populace is the reason why troubles haunt them.

That infamous Ritz Carlton in Moscow near Kremlin certainly saw over 20 murders, and god knows how many other violent crimes. A Marriott nearby fared not much better.

> The odds of buglary, petty crimes and those vices you listed happening is close to zero. This is the reason why they are attractive to expats and high-end clients.

Such things happen near weekly, no matter how much security is posted on premises. This is really counterintuitive to a person from the West. How to say that... if hotel you are staying in is the only place in the city where burglars and pickpockets can steal anything of value, it will be targeted invariably of the amount of deterrent https://www.google.com/search?q=%22presidential+suite%22+bur...