Short answer. Possibly, yes. Article 1998 conditions the hotel's liability on notice — you or your belongings must have been made known to the hotel or its staff, and you must have followed any precautions they advised. Ordinary luggage brought in openly is generally covered, but valuables kept secret from the staff can fall outside the necessary deposit the article creates.
What the law says
provided that notice was given to them, or to their employees, of the effects brought by the guests
Civil Code, Article 1998 — Hotel-Keepers as Depositaries of a Guest's Effects. Read the full provision →
Notice Is a Condition, Not a Formality
Article 1998 treats a traveler's effects in a hotel as a "necessary deposit," but it attaches two conditions to the hotel-keeper's responsibility for them: notice of the effects brought by the guest, given to the keeper or its employees, and the guest's compliance with whatever precautions the hotel-keeper advised for their care. Both conditions generally have to be met before liability as a depositary properly attaches to the hotel, which is a narrower rule than simply asking whether something valuable disappeared from a locked room.
Why Ordinary Luggage Is Usually Covered Anyway
Courts generally do not require a guest to hand the front desk an itemized inventory of every item packed inside a suitcase; bringing ordinary luggage into a hotel in the normal course of a stay is itself a form of notice, since the staff can reasonably see it and expect it. This reading keeps the article from becoming an impossible burden to satisfy for perfectly routine travel, where no traveler realistically lists every shirt and charger at check-in.
Why Concealed Valuables Sit Differently
High-value items that a guest deliberately keeps out of sight — cash, jewelry, expensive electronics — are a different story under this same rule. Because the hotel had no real opportunity to advise precautions or take extra care for something it never knew was even there, courts have been more willing to find the notice condition unsatisfied for those specific items, even while the guest's ordinary luggage stayed fully covered by the same provision. The hotel is not being rewarded for the theft; it is simply being held only to a duty it had a fair chance to perform.
What This Means at Check-In
Guests carrying anything unusually valuable are better protected by declaring it to the front desk, using an in-room or lobby safe if the hotel offers one, and following any posted instructions, since doing so is exactly what converts a borderline item into one plainly covered by Article 1998's necessary deposit, rather than one the hotel can later argue it never had any reason to protect. A short note in the registration form or a verbal heads-up to the manager, kept simple, is usually enough to satisfy the notice requirement without turning check-in into a formal procedure.
Related provisions
- Civil Code, Article 1998 — Hotel-Keepers as Depositaries of a Guest's Effects
- Civil Code, Article 2003 — Void Waiver of Hotel Liability