Hotels and catering outlets, such as restaurants and bars, need safes that are different to those in other branches of business. Today we take a look at which devices are used in these places.
Safes in a hotel
A hotel, or more broadly an accommodation facility from holiday homes and boarding houses to 5-star boutiques, is an institution where safes are of paramount importance. Hotel facilities may use several different types of safes, depending on the department and purpose.
Hotel safes
If you own a hotel or holiday home and are concerned about the security of your guests, hotel safes are products that will interest you. Guests are increasingly opting for those establishments where the hotel rooms not only have air conditioning or a minibar, but also a hotel safe in which they can store, depending on their needs, valuables, cash or even a few documents for the duration of their stay.
Hotel safes are devices designed for guests who want to store small items such as a wallet, camera, tablet, smartphone or passport in them. In a hotel room, there is generally a place designated for the installation of such a safe, this could be a desk or a wardrobe. However, as a hotel safe is quite lightweight, you should be sure to mount it to the floor or in the wall.
A hotel safe is generally suitable for a laptop with a 15" matrix. The external dimension can vary from model to model. There are even models that allow the laptop to be charged while it is stored inside. Right- or left-opening models are available.
It is worth remembering that, due to their lightweight construction, hotel safes are not designed for storing valuables of high value, but they do provide security against 'opportunity making a thief'.
Hotel safes operate differently from classic burglar safes. They have an electronic lock with a one-time code. The hotel guest finds the safe open, locks it with a code after inserting the contents and then opens it with the same code. The lock is very easy to operate. Should the guest forget the code, the hotel staff has its own code or key for emergency opening.
We offer several models; hotel safes are usually available "off-the-shelf".
Reception safe
The second type of safe that hotels buy very often is the reception safe. Such safes can be used to store both deposits made by guests, such as valuables, cash, electronic equipment or other valuable items, but above all money from the hotel's own daily turnover, invoices, internal documents, etc. A separate category here are drop safes, which we will look at further in the context of catering facilities.
Reception safes can be of almost any size and burglary class, depending on the arrangement of the reception area and the intended use. However, even the lightweight ones are made of thick sheet steel and have at least an anti-burglary class of S1 to provide basic security against attempted break-ins. The dimensions and type of lock are arbitrary, although we recommend an electronic lock because the safe is used by many rotating people.
A hotel is above all a business with its own needs for securing not only valuables such as jewellery, but also important documents such as invoices, personnel documents, accounts, warehouse information etc. In view of this, a burglar-proof safe will be ideal. What kind of safe it will be depends on individual needs. We offer products such as fireproof cabinets and safes, larger or smaller, equipped with electronic locks with more advanced features, such as keypad locking in the event of several incorrect code entries. The capacity of such products depends on the size, and the larger and heavier the safes, the better protected the stored items will be. Floor and/or wall mounting is possible.
Restaurant safe
A restaurant, bar or other catering establishments primarily need a safe to store the cash that customers pay. However, as there is a high turnover of staff in such places, drop safes have been developed. These are special units that have a system for depositing items that fall into a space inside. The deposit is accessed through the main door, and cannot be removed through the drop slot – a guarantee that no unauthorised person will take such a deposit.
The internal dimension of the throw-in compartment depends on the size of the structure. If the safe is tall enough, you can close the drop-in chamber with a separate vault and still have free space underneath for storing documents. There are several burglary protection classes among products of this type, so if you anticipate that you will be putting large amounts of cash into the safe over the course of a day, it is worth considering one with higher burglary protection ratings.
