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How Unsafe Many Hotel Safes Actually Are.
By Roland Wildberg ~ Weekly Exclusive - Views On The Latest Trends
Monday, 4th November 2013
 
Exclusive Feature: Some measures hotels should take in order to improve hotel guest's customer satisfactory;

Do you believe your valuables are safe in a hotel? Do not be too sure! In the blog of an IT professional, we recently read the following anecdote: The man was on a business trip in a middle-class hotel. He had been checking in during the morning, in the late afternoon he put his laptop into a safe and went to dinner. Afterwards the guest aimed to continue his work, but the unit remained under lock and key: The small Cabinet no longer opened him. With "Battery Error!" the strongbox did report breathlessly from the display.

No problem, our IT Pro thought, picked up the phone and ordered a housekeeping staff for emergency opening. A manager came, did position next to the safe and unfold a small piece of paper. He held the note with his left hand, while the right one in astonishing speed did type in the six-figure master keyword.

Furthermore to prevent any failure, the staff member at the same time read it out loudly: "Enter-One-Two-Three-Four-Five-Six-Enter". Apparently this was still the default password of the factory setting for all the safes in the hotel!

As so often, the easiest way to overcome the security system, the direct route via social engineering was used properly. And what about the mini-safes in your hotel? We think it is very likely that the Masterkeyword 0-0-0-0 will uncritically open all doors from the presidential suite down to the smallest single room. And this shall be subject to immediate Change. No, we assume that neither you nor your personal's sloppiness - people are just comfortable.

And we know for sure that the need to program a master keyword for maybe 300 safes and make this accessible to all relevant managers from the service, will definetely be a bunch of work.

Sure, not all hotel people might use the general key 0-0-0-0 for default in this world. But with web access a hotel thief will generate the matching masterkey only in seconds of research, because you find easily brand name and type designation on the back of hotel safes.

The system also suffers from the unsuspecting amateurs who must be included into the process: the guests. Usually they lose their password from memory much quicker than the bellman has closed the corridor door. This wasn't supposed to happen of course to the staff – so that the code should never be noted on a piece of paper and carried around. Because notes are treacherous, and they love to fall out of the clerk's pocket. Each employee has to memorize the master key. This should be trained.

It is indeed worth: Many guests consider the room safe so important that they would pay even extra for it. This was the result of a survey by the European rating Portal "Holiday check" at 2,245 users.

More than 90% of the participants use the value box regularly, only 1% always emits the valuables at the reception desk. 40% of the respondents would like to pay fees for the use of the safe, another 37% do it reluctantly, 15% only uses the in-room safe, if it doesn't cost anything.

This is strictly an exclusive feature, reprints of this article in any shape or form without prior written approval from 4Hoteliers.com is not permitted.

Roland Wildberg is Travel Writer and Correspondent based in Berlin, Germany. He started as an Editor for the National daily 'Die Welt' (tourism section), later on switched to a freelanced career and nowadays mainly publishes on the Web. Observing the hospitality industry has always fascinated him as it looks like the perfect combination of sleeping and writing – work-live-balance at its best.

Roland also heads the annual 4Hoteliers ITB Berlin news micro-site journalist and video/photo teams. For more info:
www.4Hoteliers.com/itb.

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