Nine Things to Know About Keeping Your Stuff Safe on a Trip

Close a door behind you and something in your brain relaxes. The hotel room, the stateroom, the roomette on the train, even the lounge chair you claimed on the pool deck: each one starts to feel like a little piece of home, and home is where you stop watching your stuff. That feeling is the security bubble. It's a feeling, and it has no lock.

On my recent 35th anniversary trip, I found myself falling into trusting the bubble All. The. Time. Gimbal on the counter, laptop tucked into the bedside table, that kind of thing.

It's hard, I'll give you that -- but these are the things we should each remember:

1. Your room is shared space that happens to be yours tonight

Count the keys to the room you're sleeping in.

Housekeeping has one. Maintenance has one. The front desk can cut a fresh one in seconds for anyone who sounds convincing enough.

A hotel room works less like your house and more like a storage unit where the office, the cleaning crew, and a long line of past renters have all held a key at some point. Almost all of those people are honest and busy, and you'll never give them a thought. The lock still only stops people who don't have a key, and a lot of people do.

What to do: treat anything you'd hate to lose the way you'd treat it in a coffee shop. Passport, cash, and the one piece of jewelry that matters go in the safe or stay with you. They don't sit on the dresser.

2. Heavy doors can stop just short of the latch

Hotel doors are heavy, and the closers on them are slow. Plenty of them drift shut, stop a hair short of the latch, and sit there looking locked.

What to do: when you leave, check the handle before you walk away. When you're in the room, flip the inside lock as soon as the door shuts, nap included. That second lock is the one only you control.

3. The balcony door counts as a door

We check the hallway door and forget the slider. On a ground floor, or where balconies sit close together, the slider is the easy way in, and it's the one people leave open for air.

What to do: lock the slider when you leave and before you sleep. If a ground-floor room makes you uneasy, ask for a higher floor at check-in. Front desks hear that one all the time.

4. Your room number is private information

The room number is half of what someone needs to charge things to you, talk their way into a key, or just know when you're out. It gets shared constantly: read aloud at the front desk, printed on the key sleeve, told to the shuttle driver, posted in a photo of the view.

What to do: keep it to yourself and the people in your party. Memorize it and leave the paper sleeve in the room. Give a driver the building name. Hold off on the balcony photo until you've checked out.

5. Your keycard is a key, and on a ship it's more than that

People treat keycards like coasters. They leave them on pool tables, bar tops, and beach towels. Older magnetic-stripe cards can also be copied by someone with the right reader and a minute alone with the card. On a cruise ship the card carries more weight. On Norwegian Cruise Line® your keycard opens your stateroom, pays for everything you charge on board, and is your ID for getting back on the ship in port. Lose it and you've lost your key, your wallet, and your way back aboard in one go.

What to do: keep the card on you, in a pocket or on a lanyard, not on the table. If it goes missing, report it right away (front desk on land, Guest Services on the ship) so the old one gets shut off. A replacement takes a few minutes. Waiting until morning gives the old card a whole night of use.

6. The pool deck is the most public spot on the ship

Once your towel is on a lounger, it starts to feel like your patio for the afternoon. Thousands of guests and crew walk past your lounger in a day, and every one of them can see the phone, the sunglasses, and the keycard you left under your towel while you went in for a swim. The same goes for the beach at a resort or a private island.

What to do: bring less. A small zip bag with the keycard, a little cash, and the phone covers most of a pool day. Swim in shifts if you're with someone or take the few things that matter into a waterproof pouch. Leave the good camera in the stateroom safe.

7. A sleeper car locks from the inside

On a long-distance train the roomette feels like your own little apartment, and while you're in it, it is. You can latch the door and draw the curtain. When you walk to the dining car or the Sightseer Lounge, though, that door doesn't lock behind you. On Amtrak's Superliner trains the big luggage rack sits on the lower level, open to anyone moving through the car.

What to do: carry the valuables when you leave the room, even for a 20-minute lunch. Put the big bags on the lower rack with nothing inside you'd miss, and keep a small day bag with you.

8. The in-room safe has a staff override

In-room safes on land and at sea are worth using. Staff can also open them, because somebody forgets a PIN every day. Think of the safe as a good drawer with a lock on it, fine for everyday valuables and too thin for anything you couldn't replace.

What to do: use it for the everyday things. For the rest, ask whether the front desk keeps a main safe, or keep it on you. Better still, ask whether it needs to come on the trip at all.

9. Read the theft terms before you need them

Most of us assume that if something walks off, the hotel or the travel insurance will make it right. Hotels set limits on what they'll pay for, and insurance policies spell out what they expect of you before a theft claim pays. Those limits and conditions sit in the fine print most of us never read.

What to do: read the baggage and theft section of your policy before you leave home. Snap a quick photo of your valuables and the serial numbers on your electronics. If something does go missing, get a written report from hotel or ship security the same day. A claim goes easier with one in hand.

The habit that travels with you

Check the door, lock the slider, pocket the card, pack light for the pool. Do those on the first day of a trip and by the third you won't notice you're doing them. They'll ride along on the next trip too.

Stepping out of the room brings the second half of this: how you carry yourself on the street and in port. That's the next guide, How Not to Look Like a Tourist.