2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44
In order not to become a victim of robbers, local bandits or terrorists, you need to take care of your safety in advance while traveling. How to choose a hotel, what to look for when checking in and how to protect yourself during your stay?
Before arrival
1. Before booking a room, pay attention to the surroundings of the hotel. Is the area considered safe by locals? Is it safe to walk in this area at night? Is there a high crime rate in the city you are planning to visit? Is there a threat of terrorist attacks?
It's a good idea to check reviews on sites like FlyerTalk, Milepoint, Lonely Planet, and TripAdvisor before you travel to get more information on the location of the hotel. You can also use the Street View feature in Google Maps to ensure that the area around the hotel is normal.
2. When choosing a hotel, make sure the front desk is open 24 hours a day. Find out how rooms are closed: using a map or otherwise. Does the hotel have an automatic gate so that only guests can pass.
During check-in and after check-in
3. When you check in, ask for a room not on the ground floor. Experts recommend choosing rooms no lower than the third floor and no higher than the sixth.
This will keep you high enough to prevent burglars from entering the room, and low enough to reach your window in the event of a fire.
Also, rooms on the ground floor reduce privacy if you don't like closing the curtains. Also remember that the ground floor is not necessarily near the ground, especially if the hotel is located on an elevated position.
4. After settling into a room, always lock the doors. Don't leave the door open, even if you just decide to run into the hotel lobby for a minute. You'd be surprised if you find out how often people confuse rooms and visit their neighbors by mistake. And nothing, the keys fit perfectly.
Therefore, at night, close yourself with a chain, latch and other safety elements that are on the door. This will protect you from unexpected night visits.
5. If someone knocks on the door and introduces themselves as hotel staff and you haven't called anyone, first call the front desk and ask if they really sent someone. Look through the peephole before opening.
In higher class hotels, the hotel staff may visit you in the afternoon to offer bed preparation services. In this case, the hotel employee will be wearing a uniform with a badge on the chest.
If you do not feel safe, open the door with a chain, or do not open or return a knock at all.
6. Leave documents and securities in the safe. Of course, an in-room safe may not provide you with 100% security, but it will at least protect you from strangers.
Unfortunately, it cannot provide one hundred percent security - that's putting it mildly. So it's better to just take all your papers with you or give them to the hotel employee at the front desk to put them in the safe.
7. At American Airlines, during the briefing, they give pilots the following advice:
When traveling alone and leaving your hotel room, leave a note telling you where you went and when. If something happens to you, this note will be a great help in your search.
8. If you invite someone you don't know very well into your room, make sure your jewelry, money, and documents are tucked away in hard-to-reach places. For example, you can hide them in the corner of the top shelf of the cabinet or hide them behind the drawer of the dresser. Your documents will be safer there than in a safe or in a drawer of a nightstand, if only because it will take a stranger more time to find them.
And of course, the safest thing is not to invite people you are not sure of into the room at all, or at least not to leave them unattended.
When you leave the room
9. If you leave the room, leave the TV or radio on. This will make it appear that you are still in the room. You can leave the Do Not Disturb sign on the door. While the thieves are likely to know these tricks, they would rather choose a different room. Why risk it? Especially if there are many quiet and empty rooms around.
If the hotel still has a sign "Please clean the room", do not hang it up in your absence - this warns that you are not in the room.
Additional Tips
The American Association of Hotels and Motels (AH & LA) offers some additional advice.
10. If you have lost your room key, then, when making a replacement, ask to turn off the lost one. Thoughts that someone has stolen the key and may enter at any time,.
11. Make sure all windows and balcony doors in your room are tightly closed. Even if your room is located on the upper floors, it can be entered, for example, from the next balcony or from the window of the room on the floor above yours.
12. After checking in, find out where the evacuation door is. This can be easily done by examining the hotel plan on the diagram attached to your door from the inside. Or you can walk to the exit and see it yourself. All this will save you time in an emergency.
Conclusion
Wherever you travel, be in control of your surroundings. Anything you do to prevent theft will help you alienate potential burglars from looking for an easier victim.
Turn on your enemy radar and plan what you can do to protect yourself in the event of an attack. This will prevent attackers from catching you by surprise.
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