[lmm]

Leave them in the hotel safe (many will give you one in your room) if you prefer. It just doesn't seem worth the hotel putting serious effort into the lock on the room door, because that's always going to be insecure, if only because the minimum-wage cleaning staff need access to all the rooms.

[dalke]

What's the point of mentioning minimum-wage here? Would your logic change if the staff weren't paid minimum wage? If you are staying at a hotel were the staff was paid above minimum wage, would you feel more secure?

The BLS says that the median wage for "Maids and Housekeeping Cleaners" is $9.32. Federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour. Obviously then, most are not paid minimum wage.

In any case, people also want a long-term job. An aspect of keycard entry is that you have a record of what people entered the room. If only one person entered when something was stolen, then that person is a definite suspect, and may be fired. But if it's possible to circumvent that security, then it's also possible to frame others.

[lmm]

>If you are staying at a hotel were the staff was paid above minimum wage, would you feel more secure?

Yes. Seriously, is that even a question? Wouldn't you?

Higher wages mean two things: the staff have more to lose by being fired, and by implication the hotel puts more effort into its staff. Which means they're probably recruiting more carefully and putting more effort into staff loyalty once they're there.

[dalke]

Then my point is that most hotel cleaning staff is paid more than minimum wage, so the scenario of the minimum wage staff is the uncommon scenario.

I don't think wages affect honesty to any great extent, no. I think bad working conditions affect honesty a lot more.

If you believe this to be true, do you ask the hotel how much they pay their cleaning staff, and choose the one with higher base pay? How much more are you willing to pay to be in a hotel which pays their employees a higher wage?

Higher wages mean other things than those two. It could mean that it's harder to get staff because there is better employment elsewhere, so there's less risk to being fired for suspicion of theft because it's not hard to find a new job. It could be because the union is strong and able to negotiate better than management, while management actively wants to break the union by treating their cleaning staff poorly in the hopes that the staff will steal, so management has reason to fire them and blame the union for protecting thieves.

(Yes, the latter sound much less likely than the former.)

[lmm]

>I don't think wages affect honesty to any great extent, no. I think bad working conditions affect honesty a lot more.

Sure, but the two are closely correlated.

>do you ask the hotel how much they pay their cleaning staff, and choose the one with higher base pay? How much more are you willing to pay to be in a hotel which pays their employees a higher wage?

I'd be surprised if they handed that information out, and it's not worth a great deal of research. But if I do happen to know then it changes how much I'm willing to pay for a given hotel, yes. I haven't calculated every facet of my internal hotel-pricing model (and it's almost certainly nonoptimal in some way - just not worth the effort to optimize), but I've certainly been known to pay more for a hotel I had a better impression of that, and on the (IIRC unique) occasion when I happened to know what the cleaners at one were paid I'm pretty sure that was one of the factors.

[dalke]

If people started asking, and making decisions based on that knowledge, then perhaps salaries and working conditions would improve for the cleaners. But you are right, people (including myself) use other proxies instead.

[ljensen]

People have posted many videos/blog posts about how easy it is to open a hotel safe if the hotel fails to reset the factory code: http://www.dailydot.com/news/hotel-safe-security-flaw/

Since seeing this video last year, I have yet to find a hotel safe the I can open with all zeros. In the end, I figure that if someone really wants to steal my stuff, they'll eventually find a way.

[nodata]

I can't fit all of my valuables in a hotel safe.

If the hotel wants to fit a lock that doesn't prevent easy access to my room, and my stuff gets stolen, they can meet my lawyer.

[brown9-2]

I think you assume that the room safe is harder to break than the lock. Is this true?