Follow These Safety Tips Whenever You're Staying at a Hotel

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.

The first thing you can do to increase your safety in a hotel room is to check it out before you even unpack:

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:

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.

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:

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