Our guest post today comes from Corporate Safety Travel. Their mission is simple: to help you enjoy your travels more and worry less. You can read the original blog post here on the Corporate Safety Travel Blog.
These are the top hotel safety tips that frequent travelers and experts agree on.
Upon Checking In
- Request a room that’s not on the ground floor. Security experts agree that staying between the third and sixth floors – where rooms are high enough to avoid easy break-ins and are low enough to be reached by fire engine ladders in the event of an emergency are ideal. Be sure to also make your room location preference known at the time of booking your room too.
Entering and Leaving Your Hotel Room
- Don’t keep your room key in the key folder handed to you at the front desk upon check-in. The room key folder typically has your room number written on it. If you accidentally lose or leave your key folder with the key in it, then anyone finding it can access your room. Our advice is to only take the key with you and leave the folder behind in the room.
- If you’re going to leave your room and don’t need housekeeping to come in then turn on the TV and hang the do not disturb sign on the outside of your door on your way out. Now you’ve left the impression that someone is in the room, and there is less of a chance that a stranger would try to enter it.
- Your mother told you, and she’s right, never open the door to a stranger, especially if they claim to be a member of the hotel staff, and you’re not expecting them. Ask them to wait and call the front desk if they sent someone up and then verify their identity.
Internet Security
- Once you’ve entered your room, you might feel a bit safer than in the lobby or a public place in the resort or hotel. That sense of safety translates to internet safety too. Yet your internet may not be any more secure than in an airport or coffee shop. In reality, you’re still using a public Wi-Fi hotspot. When connecting to the hotel Wi-Fi tell your computer that you’re connecting to a public network. The objective is to set your computer firewall to its maximum. Your best option is to use a wired internet connection instead of Wi-Fi. Never access banking or other personal websites from a public network.
Valuables in Your Hotel Room
Protect your valuables by using the hotel safe and using a separate safe lock with it. Two reasons for the additional lock:
- A little-known fact, but many hotels do not accept liability for items left in guestroom safe.
- The mere presence of an additional lock should deter a thief from attempting a break-in of the safe.