Travel can be exciting or burdensome, depending on your personality and the purposes of your trip, but whether you’re on a thrilling vacation or a boring business trip, one thing is always true: Your hotel room is your refuge. No matter how swanky (or unswanky) your hotel might be, after a long day it’s where you go to rest your bones, slather on sunscreen, and/or practice your big presentation while demolishing your mini-bar.
But hotel rooms leave something to be desired when it comes to safety and security. Sure, your hotel door has a lock and a deadbolt, and possibly a security chain, U-bar lock, or security latch for extra security—but all of these security features are mass-produced and pretty easy to circumvent either physically or via sophisticated tools. Hotel doors are designed to be relatively easy to open both for staff access needs and evacuation needs—and we really have no idea how much crime happens at hotels, because most hotel chains work very, very hard to keep the police out of their hotels.
Whenever you’re staying in a hotel room, don’t take your security for granted, and don’t rely on the tools provided by the hotel to ensure your safety. Follow these hotel safety tips to enhance your security and ensure your stay is as restful and restorative as you expect.
Tip one: Inspect
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The first thing you can do to increase your safety in a hotel room is to check it out before you even unpack:
- Prop open the door with your luggage so you have an unimpeded escape route.
- Inspect the room—check for anyone hiding in closets, under the bed, or behind curtains. It might sound paranoid, but the worst way to find out someone’s hiding in there is when you’re alone and unprepared.
- Check the door locks. They’re easy to bypass, yes, but if they don’t work at all you should request a new room. If your room has a balcony or a walk-out with sliding doors, check the locks there as well.
- Check the peephole. Make sure you have an unobstructed view of the area outside your door. Then cover the peephole with something—a Post-It note works just fine, or a piece of tape.
Step two: Reinforce
Once you’ve checked the room, it’s time to consider reinforcing your door security. Since you can’t rely on hotel locks—and since plenty of staff members have access to your room at all times anyway—you should take steps to secure your door on your own. There are a lot of pretty simple options:
- Door wedge. These range from simple hunks of rubber to more sophisticated devices with built-in alarms. The advantage here is their size: They’re easy to pack, easy to install in any door, and will prevent someone from pushing the door open even if they’ve managed to disengage the locks.
- Portable door locks. You can add a second (or third) lock to your door using a variety of devices. You can also add something like the Lock Locker or a deadbolt strap that prevents the deadbolt on your door from being turned even if someone has the key.
If you don’t have these items on hand (or forgot to pack them) and you’re concerned, you can try a few hacks that will get the job done. A pair of clothes hangers from your room’s closet can be used to jam the door handle, and simply draping a towel over your door handle can prevent folks from using an under-the-door tool to gain access to your room.
Step three: Take care
Now that your room has been inspected and your door locks reinforced, there are a few extra hotel safety tips you can take to ensure your security isn’t compromised during your stay:
- Toss the card sleeves. If your hotel hands you the room cards in one of those sleeves with the room number marked on it, throw it away. Advertising the hotel and room you’re in while you’re clearly not in your room is a bad idea—especially since all of the extra security discussed here requires you to be in your room to be effective.
- Trust but verify. If someone unexpectedly knocks on your door and claims to be hotel staff, don’t let them in until you’ve verified their presence with the front desk. Even if they know your name, it could be a ruse to gain access. All the portable locks in the world will do you no good if you simply open the door the moment you’re asked to.
- Mind your valuables. Since you can’t secure your room effectively when you’re not in it, don’t leave anything in the room you can’t afford to lose. If your room has a safe that’s an okay option (although you can’t be certain who has access to it, and hotel safes are not exactly legendary in their security), but leaving stuff with the front desk might be better. Best of all? Keep anything you can’t afford to lose on your person when you leave the room.
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