Hotels are overall probably more bugged than Airbnb's. The more expensive your room, the more likely it's going to be bugged. Especially in the capitals.
> It is sometimes said that "All hotel rooms abroad are bugged for audio and visual surveillance." Of course it is not true that all of them are bugged, but a great many are -- especially in major hotels frequented by foreign business and government travelers.
> Most foreign security and intelligence services have various means of screening incoming visitors to identify persons of potential intelligence interest. They also have well-established contacts with the hotels that commonly host conferences and meetings with international participation. For convenience, some even maintain permanent offices within the largest hotels. If the local intelligence service considers you a significant intelligence target, it may arranged for you to be assigned a room that is already prepared for the desired monitoring.
> In your hotel, assume that the room and telephone are being monitored. DO NOT try to play investigator and start looking for electronic listening devices. This again could send the wrong signals to a surveillant. Just make sure that you do not say or do anything in your hotel room that you would not want to see posted on the Internet.
> The bottom line is this: When traveling over-seas, in particular for official business and where accommodations are provided by the host, assume that your hotel room and work spaces contain clandestine audio and video surveillance devices.
These are all US government sources meant for their own employees. The US government is good at this intelligence stuff so I presume they know what they are talking about. And you can expect that they are doing the same to foreign guests staying in the USA.
You'll will find similar sources from the UK govt as well (search for "site:*.gov.uk hotel room surveillance").
That sounds more like targeted surveillance, though. "Hey, important government employee, you need to expect that your hotel room is bugged".
Most people aren't important government employees that everybody in the world is trying to spy on, and no intelligence service will install bugs in their rooms.
Important government employees are also more careful. Before they became important government employees, they might not have been careful and have done things that they still wouldn't want to see on the internet. So there is value in collecting compromising footage of a large number of people, storing them, and waiting until some of them become important. In general the same idea that the FVEY are doing with their long term low-suspicion data storage projects, just applied to hotel rooms. Investing into collection now, never knowing whether it's going to become valuable in the future. Young people are more likely to experiment and people do have careers.
Do you work for a company that has user data or IP that a foreign government might want access to? Then you might be a person of interest for that government's intelligence agencies. They aren't just interested in government employees and defense contractors.
