[dropcap letter=”N”]o thanks, I’ll carry that bag myself,” Marianne Crossley said to the porter as she stepped out of the London black cab, “it’s too valuable.” She handed a fistful of pound sterling to the driver, hefted her designer tote, and followed the porter into the cool marble lobby of the Langham Hilton Hotel.

Elegance embraced her. Marianne straightened her posture. The Langham was exclusive. She was privileged. She imagined herself belonging to the “UC,” as she thought of it, English Upper Class. Her entire European vacation would be the height of luxury; the black cab and Langham lobby were just the beginning.

Marianne chatted brightly with the reception staff as she checked in, a fresh veneer of energy covering the exhaustion and jetlag of her journey. Emotionally, she had already slipped into something comfortable, something contrived, perhaps a bit pretentious. Cloistered within the confines of the lobby, she felt protected, shielded from the rudenesses of the real world.

You know what’s coming. Marianne took her room key in one hand and reached for her tote with the other. It was gone.

The Langham’s two lobby cameras caught the crook, but the video was not monitored by security officers and was only viewed after the fact. When the larceny was discovered and the tapes reviewed, an interloper could be seen in Marianne’s proximity; but the front desk blocked the camera’s view of the tote. Neither the hotel, nor the police, recognized the suspect as a known thief.

Hotel lobbies are common sites of bag theft. To the guest they offer a false sense of security, with doormen in their guard-like uniforms, desk clerks facing outward, and bellmen looking after luggage. In reality, most anyone can enter a lobby, and who’s to say whether or not they have legitimate business in the hotel? At peak hours, reception staff are harried and the lobby swirls with the incoming, the outgoing, guests of guests, and lookyloos.

Some small hotels keep their entrances locked and visitors must be buzzed in, but many of these have no security staff or video surveillance. Large hotels, with shops and restaurants open to the public, may have guards and cameras but are as exclusive as a post office: anyone can come and go without suspicion. Which are safer?

There is no answer to that question. The responsibility for personal belongings is the traveler’s—period. We may give our luggage to bellmen and that is fine; but if we don’t, or if we have a carry-on, a roll-aboard, a purse, or anything we prefer to handle ourselves, its safekeeping is our responsibility. Hotel staff don’t know whose is whose or who belongs to whom. Perhaps a Langham employee saw a man take Marianne’s bag. Perhaps he assumed the man was Marianne’s husband.

The Langham is not particularly prone to lobby lifts, and neither did it suffer a rash of them. Perhaps an opportunist overheard Marianne’s general announcement in the portico that her bag was “too valuable” to entrust to a hotel employee. Perhaps not.

Marianne was luckier than most victims. Her bag was found intact by a London businessman who went to the trouble of phoning her home in America. Relatives there told him where she was staying and he personally delivered the bag to her, refusing a reward or reimbursement for the international phone call. Only cash had been taken from Marianne’s bag. Yet, in the interim days, she’d had to replace her passport and airline tickets, cancel her credit cards, arrange to get cash, and file a police report.

If the Langham were on busy Oxford Street, this lobby lift would make more sense. But it’s not; the Langham is on a relatively quiet street several blocks off Oxford. Hotels smack on a main tourist drag have many more lobby thefts; those on La Rambla, in Barcelona, come first to my mind. But if it can happen at the Langham, it can happen anywhere.

And if it can happen in seemingly-safe Scandinavia, it can happen anywhere. Certain frequent visitors during Stockholm’s summer season have been dubbed “breakfast thieves.” They don’t steal breakfast; they lurk on the fringes of sumptuous buffets at upscale hotels, waiting for a moment of inattention.

“They lie in wait for a businessman to fetch a second glass of orange juice,” said Anders Fogelberg, head of the Stockholm police department’s tiny pickpocket detail, “and in that instant of opportunity, they and the businessman’s laptop, briefcase, or mini-computer skip out the door.”

Excerpt from Travel Advisory: How to Avoid Thefts, Cons, and Street Scams
Chapter Four: Hotels: Have a Nice Stay