Police reported six hotel room break-ins.

And a spokesman for the Crime Prevention Unit of the Bermuda Police Service stressed that these crimes were not the fault of hotels.

Five Sonesta Beach Hotel rooms were burgled during the early hours of Tuesday morning, a Police spokeswoman said yesterday.

Meanwhile a Newstead Hotel room was also broken into between 1.15 a.m. and 8 a.m. on Tuesday.

Police Press officer Evelyn James Barnett said: "The contents of wallets and purses -- usually containing cash, traveller's cheques, credit cards and other personal items --were stolen whilst the occupants were sleeping.

"In each case the guests had left their sliding glass doors open for ventilation.'' Sgt. Chris Wilcox, who specialises in crime prevention, told The Royal Gazette that a rash of break-ins over a small period of time was not particularly unusual.

"Quite often thieves will target a series of rooms,'' he noted.

He said the number of break-ins reported at this time of the year did tend to be lower than the number reported in summer because of the cooler weather and the lower number of visitors.

The warmer temperatures in summer encouraged visitors to open their sliding glass doors to get the breeze and the sound of the sea in their rooms.

Sgt. Wilcox said visitors had been known to open their sliding glass doors and turn their air conditioners off just so they could hear the ocean.

These open doors provided easy access for thieves.

The Police were actively trying to stop this practise, he continued.

"We have been working with the Department of Tourism and the Bermuda Hotel Association to try and warn tourists to lock their doors and windows.'' But this work had to be handled sensitively, he added.

The Police wanted to advise visitors of the need for safety in order to keep crime down but also did not want to run the risk of frightening them off.

And he defended hotels on the Island because they all offered at least one formal warning to visitors about keeping their rooms secure.

This warning was either verbal or in written form and quite often there was more than one.

"So they are told,'' stressed Sgt. Wilcox. "But by far the biggest problem is that the tourists themselves leave their doors and windows open.

"This is a continuing problem the Department of Tourism, Bermuda Hotel Association and the Police experience.'' Guests would not necessarily be happy -- and would probably get nervous -- about the idea of hotel security staff checking their doors and windows through the course of the night, he added.

"The hotels can only do so much. It falls on the tourists to be more security conscious.'' With the season upon them, Police have kicked off a series of meetings with hotel managers and heads of hotel security to discuss what else could be done to reduce crime and to make them aware of what the Police could do to help.

This included sending registered letters to known hotel thieves upon their release from prison advising them that they were banned from hotel properties they had stolen from previously.

And there was the hotel watch system -- a spinoff of the neighbourhood watch idea -- in which hotels in an area formed a loosely knit group and worked to keep each other informed about security related events on their respective properties.

In closing, Sgt. Wilcox pointed out that crime prevention could not be measured.

"You can not tell when a person tried to get into a room and was unsuccessful. You can't measure crime prevention, you can only measure the number of break-ins as such.''