A Borrowed Key, 26 Hotel Rooms and a Suitcase of Loot in Eilat

Two suspects have been arrested over a systematic series of thefts from hotel guest rooms in Eilat, Israel's resort city on the Red Sea at the southern tip of the country, the Israel Police said. An investigation opened in the Eilat region found that a 30-year-old suspect from Ashdod who worked at a hotel in the city had given a key to a friend, a 39-year-old from Kiryat Malakhi.

According to the police account, security cameras documented the second suspect moving between the hotel's floors while impersonating a maintenance worker, entering 26 different rooms and taking cash, credit cards, bags and guests' personal belongings. The two then went together to various shops around Eilat, where they are alleged to have made several purchases using credit cards stolen from the rooms. When detectives from the Eilat region made the arrests, one of the men was found with a suitcase holding a quantity of property suspected of being stolen, including chequebooks, a wallet, a mobile phone, personal documents and bottles of alcohol. Police said the thefts took place over a period of time and that they were examining whether there are further cases that went unreported or undiscovered. Both men are already separately involved in several other investigations into property offences, burglary and use of a stolen credit card. An indictment is to be filed against the suspect who carried out the thefts from the rooms.

Eilat is the one Israeli resort that is full

The setting matters to the scale of the opportunity. While Israeli hotels have struggled since the collapse of inbound tourism, Eilat has been the exception, kept busy by Israelis holidaying at home. Calcalist reported on 28 July 2026 that the national average hotel occupancy rate for the first half of 2026 was 44 per cent, down from 50 per cent a year earlier, but that Eilat recorded 66 per cent, the second-highest in the country after Herzliya. The Jewish Chronicle reported on 24 July 2026 that Eilat hotels were running at roughly 90 per cent occupancy over the summer, with about half a million holidaymakers expected across July and August, almost all of them domestic visitors. A city of full hotels with a rapid turnover of guests is a city in which a stranger in work clothes walking a corridor attracts no attention.

How the case gets to court from here

The statement credits the arrests to detectives of the Eilat region. The Israel Police is a national force divided into six regional district commands, the southernmost of which covers Eilat, with local detectives handling property crime of this kind. The police statement says an indictment will be filed against one of the two men. Filing charges is a decision for prosecutors once the evidence file is complete, and nothing in the police account has yet been tested in court.

What the police did not say

The statement did not name the hotel, say how much was stolen, or say over what period the thefts ran beyond “a period of time”. It did not say how many guests reported losses, whether any property has been returned, or how the hotel employee obtained the key he is said to have handed over. It also did not say what, if anything, will happen to the second suspect, since the indictment was announced only for the man alleged to have entered the rooms.