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 were taking in water and it was quickly determined that the cumberland river had overflown after the army core of engineers put a damn down and could not get it back up. I cant begin to explain the chaos that ensued there with that many people and the hotel essentially being on a dead end. 3k guests, likely more than that in employees, all scattering to get to higher ground and out of a bottle neck. Hotel was safely evacuated but the entire place was underwater by the next day. That said, the "orientation" section in this article I think is absolutely necessary.

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.

Indeed, big companies often do disaster prepareness exercises from a business continuity point of view. I remember doing one 15 years ago at a Big 4 accounting firm. Failing everything (including my little bit) across to secondary site in another city, and it had to be done by someone other than me (since I was the main person responsible for my system).

As they say, you should always check you can restore your backups.

Those are both reasonable attitudes.

Once you've actually successfully navigated any particular disaster scenario, you will try to avoid situations that look like they could contribute to a repeat. My wife once had a laptop stolen out of the trunk of a car; she is now hyperaware of where and how she parks and what is visible through the windows.

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 sense of at least knowing your surroundings and the area's geography/climate/seasonal weather patterns. We recently narrowly avoided getting caught in [0], and that was with us making a conscious effort to not spend too much time in any of the low-lying areas, not even for a day hike - we'd always park somewhere relatively high and simply avoided hiking any of the low regions. That storm happened just one day after we were there passing through that exact spot. The tourists staying at that popular hotel probably didn't think about how they're staying on the floor of an enormous desert valley in a monsoon-y time of year. By failing to prepare you're preparing to fail...

[0] https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-08-05/unpreced...

>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.

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

Heated blanket on the thermostat? Or do they have timed-shutoffs or door-key based systems that cuts off the electricity when you leave? What do you do then?

Most of them just have a slot for your room key to turn on the electricity and/or A/C, but many times it is a physical which i.e. it doesn't care what gets stuffed into the hole and often there is some kind of brochure that can be folded/ripped into card shape to trip the switch.

Ask for a second key and leave it in the slot?

Those slots don't require a specific key. Put your library card in there and it'll work fine.

They get suspicious when I pay for X occupancy but request X+Y keys.

Hotels routinely give me two cards when I check in--and certainly will if I ask. I usually stick one in my wallet and one in my bag or whatever so I'm less likely to accidentally leave the card in the room.

Usually you can stick anything that has the correct form into that slot. Even thin cardboard :)

Charging devices, leaving the TV on to fake occupancy as the article suggests.

Also AC is much more efficient if it keeps the room at a stable temperature rather than letting it heat up and then cooling it down again. I never set it that low myself but some hotels don't have a temp setting, that's true

AC might be comparatively more efficient at cooling the room 1 degree rather than 5, that doesn't mean that keeping that temperature for 8 hours will consume less energy than cooling it once you come back in.

If it were really overall more efficient it would be cheaper for the hotel owner to just keep it on all the time, but clearly it's not.

It really varies. Some places have the bare minimum of air conditioning to say they have it, but underbuild the system such that there’s no chance of recovering if you get back during the day while it’s still sunny&hot outside.

Preparing specifically for a flood would be silly but you can do some common sense preparation that works for any number of potential disasters.

1. Know your egress routes

2. Be aware of your surroundings

3. Be ready to move

4. Have a communication plan

5. Know places to go in emergency (e.g. Consulate or group rally points)

6. If it doesn't feel right, leave.

The variety of situations in which being confident in my escape plan would be helpful is pretty high. The effort required to review a basic escape plan ("follow the route mapped out on the inside of my door") is pretty low.

I don't really need to know the odds of each specific reason I might need to get outside to determine it's worth a short walk to the end of the hall to confirm I know which door leads to the stairs and where I end up outside once I go down them.

Your comment makes me think of this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Rescorla#Corporate_securi...

TL;DR: he got hired as a security officer for Morgan Stanley's WTC offices, and he made the employees regularly practice evacuations.

> Rescorla wanted the company out of the building because he continued to feel, as did Hill, that the World Trade Center was still a target for terrorists and that the next attack could involve a plane crashing into one of the towers.[17] He recommended to his superiors at Morgan Stanley that the company leave Manhattan office space, mentioning that labor costs were lower in New Jersey and that the firm's employees and equipment would be safer in a proposed four-story building. However, this recommendation was not followed because the company's lease at the World Trade Center would not terminate until 2006. At Rescorla's insistence, all employees (including senior executives) then practiced emergency evacuations every three months.[18]

> After Dean Witter merged with Morgan Stanley in 1997, the company eventually occupied 22 floors in the South Tower and several floors in a building nearby. Rescorla's office was on the South Tower’s 44th floor.[4] Feeling that the authorities lost legitimacy after they failed to respond to his 1990 warnings, he concluded that employees of Morgan Stanley, which was the largest tenant in the World Trade Center, could not rely on first responders in an emergency and needed to empower themselves through surprise fire drills, in which he trained employees to meet in the hallway between stairwells and go down the stairs two by two to the 44th floor.[15] Rescorla's strict approach to these drills put him into conflict with some high-powered executives, who resented the interruption to their daily activities, but he nonetheless insisted that these rehearsals were necessary to train the employees in the event of an emergency. He timed employees with a stopwatch when they moved too slowly and lectured them on fire emergency basics.[15][18]

More about Rescorla's "epic death" — and his "epic life," as a "Celtic warrior," including legendary performance in combat as a young U.S. Army officer in the Battle of the Ia Drang Valley, written up in We Were Soldiers Once ... and Young — from the Washington Post shortly after 9/11: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/2001/10/28/...

Simpsons nuclear plant fire drill video: https://youtu.be/XTElSJExL4U

Always have a backup plan:

https://crzysdrs.net/dv/victim/356-as-a-former-sysadmin-i-al...

The more important thing is to have a state of mind where you are willing to recognize the early indicators that a situation is only going to get worse and take action to exit that situation.

Also, if you park a vehicle at the hotel try to avoid spots that would likely be blocked by fire engines.

Corps of engineers. From French corps d'armée (16c.), from French corps (old French cors) "body," from Latin corpus "body".

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.

An appropriately sized pacsafe is what I use.

https://pacsafe.co.uk/collections/portable-safes-bag-protect...

Even something as simple as having a bag that locks and putting your valuables in it and locking it would probably deal with 90% of issues.

If you're an average person travelling the risk you face is from the hotel house keeping staff and there's really two types of theft there. First is opportunistic where the staff can look inside your luggage and find small potentially valuable things they can steal but which won't be immediately obvious and you might think you've just misplaced in your luggage somewhere. These people don't want the police called in, they want to keep their jobs, so they'll generally steal in a manner that makes it difficult for you to know if it was really stolen or if it was just misplaced.

The second is, a member of staff is finishing or planning on leaving and they'll go to greater lengths to more obviously steal any available stuff before leaving for good. This is a bit more common in countries that use a lot of seasonal migrant labour and the staff are going home on holiday and want a final payday by hitting multiple rooms before they go.

But the second scenario is much rarer than the first. Honestly most theft from hotel rooms is just opportunistic and a simple locked bag that's tethered to something immovable will solve it. I use a pacsafe for peace of mind, there's really nothing beyond it you can reasonably do that increases the security of valuables in a room.

The lockpicking lawyer reviewed a number of these, a lot of the ones from Amazon are actually pretty bad and don't resist a simple knife. Mind you, if that's the case, at least you have some evidence that you were robbed.

When it comes to passports, it's probably best to keep them on you. I have a pouch that goes around my neck (and I put it under my shirt), probably the safest place to keep it hidden and on your person.

I have done that in the past. I just reached a point where honestly I felt like the hassle of using a hidden pocket all the time just wasn't worth it.

I generally have a nice hard case wheeled suitcase for my luggage, I bike cable that to something immovable and inside I tether the pacsafe to one of the rails where the suitcase handle runs.

It's enough peace of mind for me. 99% of casual theft isn't going to try and open the bag, if they do then they have to deal with the pacsafe.

If someone is absolutely determined then they'll get through all that of course, but as you say, you will know it's happened and the police are going to get involved. The number of thieves realistically willing to do that ain't going to be that high because the payoff of what might be in there is unknown.

I travelled continuously for a year at one point and this strat served me well enough.

I hadn’t heard of PacSafe before, so — if your suitcase is cabled to the furniture and your PacSafe is in the suitcase, wouldn’t a thief who has already opened your suitcase (probably in-place) just take the PacSafe with them to open later?

The pacsafe itself has a wire that you loop through something immovable before fitting the padlock, thief either has to cut the wire, cut through the bag part (which is wire reinforced) or break the padlock.

Most wheeled luggage has a set of hollow metal bars inside where the retractable towing handle on the top retracts into. They're pretty sturdy, so you loop the pacsafe wire around one or both before locking it and then lock the bag.

Only way to get it out is probably to destroy the luggage or break into the pacsafe itself.

The idea behind it is that the pacsafe itself might be worth preparing for if it's just out in the open tied to something secure. If a thief has no clue it's there and thinks they just have to break the padlock on the luggage itself then it's another layer of defence they're not expecting.

But importantly, it's not really a lot of work from my pov. Again it won't deter a premeditated determined thief with the right tools, but very little will.

>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.

In general, carrying things around with you are more likely to get lost or stolen in some manner than if they're just left in your room. There are probably exceptions but if I'm somewhere like Western Europe, I'm not carrying my passport around with me.

I’m usually in developed countries with pickpocketing as a problem, so I’m confident in showing my drivers license if I get controlled by police, but if I lose my passport, I’m in trouble.

But what if you have 2 passports? Carrying both is a SPoF. Where do you hide the additional?

> Where do you hide the additional?

Definitely not in the room safe, that's the first thing they'll look through.

Maybe the hotel has their own safe? But that involves trusting the staff.

I think all bets are off if someone with intent breaks into your room and does a full upheaval, but hiding it in your suitcase or e.g. sticking it with some tape under a cabinet or drawer might be adequate.

The other thing with putting things in a hotel safe is forgetting them when you leave. I basically hardly ever put clothes in a closet or a drawer in a hotel because over the course of hundreds of stays, I will forget at some point.

Reminds me of my college days, we’d play “trophy bowl” where teams of 2 against 2 would have to find a hidden object and then place it in a room cup in the centre of the room (or a bowl of a trophy if one was available).

Our preferred strategy was to have my teammate pin down the other two so I could search the room uninhibited.

Made for great entertainment for anyone watching.

They won't take a passport from the safe though. It doesn't have any value and if they're caught it's clear it's been stolen.

Such thieves want only money and perhaps devices. Anything else they don't care about.

For me that's a perfect recipe to forget about it... sooner or later, most likely under some travel related stress or in rush... unless I would stick on the bathroom mirror post-it with "remember the passport!" written on it?

There's a greater chance in most places to have your passport lost or stolen from you than losing it from somebody breaking into your hotel room I think (zero data to back this). It's also a hassle; you want to go to the beach and swim or snorkel or any sport, now what do you do, having to keep an eye on a pouch or something.

>There's a greater chance in most places to have your passport lost or stolen from you than losing it

If you keep it under your clothes in a travel wallet, this won't happen.

>you want to go to the beach and swim or snorkel or any sport

You can get waterproof pouches for this.

Uhm, good luck renting motorbike in Southeast Asia without your passport as deposit and local police is well aware of this.

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 the default state with your passport in a black envelope taped snug against the back ceiling of the enclosure.

A committed intruder might find hiding places like these eventually, but it could take an unacceptable amount of time for them to consider it.

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).

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!

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.

This was definitely true when I stayed at the Castle Wolfenstein Airbnb.

That's not at all true.

Yeah that was my next Google search. I've got you covered.

https://www.luggageandsuitcase.com/where-to-hide-valuables-i...

Put 'em in a ziplock. Pull out the top drawer of the dresser. Tape baggie to back interior. Replace drawer.

> 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 loud?

Every time I check into a hotel, I have my ID and credit card ready to hand to the clerk. They are going to ask for it anyway. I don’t bother with them asking for my name and spelling it wrong when looking up the reservation.

Plus, printing off your reservation details can be helpful for 2 reasons-

It makes check in much faster. Especially if you are jet lagged, it's much faster and easier to tell the clerk "here is my reservation confirmation", plus it's faster for them to type it in.

Second, if you don't have internet access it's nice having a hard copy. For example, your phone may be dead after traveling, or your current sim may not work in the country you traveled to. You might want to check into the hotel before going to buy a local sim so you don't have to carry your bags with you. Plus, having a hard copy also means you have the address of the hotel for a taxi driver.

This doesn't at all need to be a 'wink wink' type situation, this is how I normally check in and I've never done it for opsec reasons, it's just easier. Plus, I had a situation where I had forgotten my phone charge cable and had trouble remembering my reservation details due to a long flight.

>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 loud?

>I think not.

Yes. that makes no sense, if someone is targeting you specifically, they will already know your looks, and a hotel room thief won't care about your name.

There is still the George Kaplan case, but I believe it is a rare one:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_by_Northwest#Plot

I honestly can't think of many times where I actually told my name to the front desk anyway. Usually I have a printout of the reservation or hand them my passport since they need it anyway. It is easier for the front desk to type what they see than try to type what you say or spell out loud, especially in foreign countries that don't necessarily have experience with your name.

I normally just verbally ask staff, "can you just write my room number down and not say the floor out loud." I don't want random people who happen to be around the front desk counter at the same time knowing what room I'm in... come on.

It's been a long time since I've been at a hotel that spoke my room number aloud. I haven't had to ask.

Oh yeah? It's been a long time since I've stayed in a hotel. Pandemic. They say it. They pretty consistently say the floor too. I guess we travel different places. Better to be safe tho. Once they say it you can't put it back in.

Maybe you don't travel that much?

Well, no, I don't travel that much, but in the last three years I've probably stayed at 15 different places. I don't recall any of them saying the room number out loud. (Not a statistically valid sample, and all that...)

3 years 15 different different places. That's quite a lot, especially during pandemic. About the same as me.

You may not have been paying attention. I think people don't think about these things because they don't think it's important. It's hard to remember something that you don't care about.

No, I notice, because I find it a bit jarring. When I was a kid, they'd tell you your room number. Now they write it down and slide the paper at me, and I notice that.