I've never seen or used a safe in a villa. I'm sure they exist in many villas...but are rarely used. I would guess an electronic keypad with a battery backup would be best. You don't want guests having keys and losing them. You also need to be concerned about power failure, which is common on the islands.

Belle,

Most people that I know have built-in combination safes because they are low tech but a visit from the locksmith is required to change the combination so this arrangement wouldn't be cost-effective for a rental villa. The rental villas I've been in that have opted to provide a guest safe have installed the electronic keypad type used on cruise ships which requires each new user to swipe their credit card to change the combination. Unfortunately, if the salt air has a negative effect on the safe's mechanism, a visitor might find themselves unable to get their belongings out and it might be difficult to find someone on island to repair the safe. If you have air-conditioning this is probably less of an issue. Your best bet would be to talk to a local locksmith.

Our villa had a combo keypad with key. You had to have the key in the safe while you punched in the code. I liked that setup. We attached the key to our rental car keychain and had no trouble keeping up with it. I'm sure you could have plenty of spare keys made and leave them with your property management company.

Belle,
We've recently equipped our rental villa with hotel type room safes I found at American Hotel Register (www.americanhotel.com). They're model 54QEHK-10, are large enough to hold a laptop computer, along with cameras, passports, jewelry, etc, and are vented so the high humidity is not an issue. Each guest enters their own code to open the safe, but the managers have a master code and keys in case the safe is left closed when guests depart or forget their code.

Best,