Staying safe in hotels is unlikely to have been a subject you lost much sleep over. But that was in those surely fairy tale pre-pandemic days when most aspects of life seemed somehow safer and more straightforward.
Although the lingering incidence of coronavirus infections continues to give many reasons for taking special care when staying in a hotel, the current rules have also prompted reminders about safety in general when you are forced to stay overnight – or even a week or two – away from the comfort and security of your own home.
But it isn’t just about cleanliness worries either. Even if you are on holiday – a time when you traditionally relax and let your guard down – you should still have personal safety front and foremost in your mind.
This brief guide looks at how you can stay safe in hotels.
Health, safety, and cleanliness
Quarantine hotels
With current restrictions on travel enforced by closed borders and requirements for quarantine, the starkest expression of health concerns is in the provision of quarantine hotels close to airports.
The isolation of individual travellers – and their families, where appropriate – is accompanied by an emphasis on the cleanliness regimes maintained by the management of the hotel.
As countless reports have suggested – including one published in the Guardian newspaper on the 2nd of March 2021 – the reality of these enforced quarantine safety measures makes for a fairly dismal 14 days locked inside what many consider to have been little better than a prison.
However carefully you maintain your own self-isolation, stories from those who have experienced such quarantine suggest that not every guest plays by the rules – and you might therefore continue to be exposed to the threat of infection.
Hospitality
For most of us, the likely prospects for staying in a hotel are in this country, still – perhaps by joining this year’s surge in staycations described by the Daily Mail newspaper on the 23rd of February.
Here, too, hotels have been going out of their way to ensure your health and safety.
Despite the efforts made by the hospitality industry generally, a survey cited in a story by the Independent newspaper in August last year revealed that around a half of British hotel-stayers would not trust the cleanliness of their accommodation once lockdown had ended. 42% of those surveyed even said they would make sure to clean their room themselves before sleeping in it.
This is despite the measures taken by the hotels themselves – bottles of hand sanitiser at every turn, reception staff shielded behind Perspex screens, and restaurant staff masked.
If you are due to stay in a hotel, you can contact them and ask what measures they have in place, and what their process is if someone falls ill.
In addition to packing masks and hand sanitiser, you can also pack your own sanitising kit to use in your room.
Things you can do
There are your own safety measures you can put into place to minimise the risk of infection such as:
- using antibacterial wipes or sprays when you first enter your room and after housekeeping has been in. Wipe down light switches, the telephone, TV remote, door handles etc. Basically, any surface that could have been touched;
- if your luggage has been handled by someone else (such as porter) give that a good wipe down too;
- rewashing any mugs or glasses in your room before using them;
- keeping windows open where you can to increase fresh airflow;
- remove your bedspread, put it away in a closet and thoroughly wash your hands – despite the pandemic, bedspreads still tend not to be washed regularly;
- ordering room service to limit the contact between you and other guests as well as avoiding the spa and gym.
Personal safety
As we mentioned before, when you go away on holiday, you tend to put your guard down – you are there to relax after all. Things still can happen while you are on holiday – terrorist attacks for example, or lone travellers being attacked. So, what can you do to keep safe?
- staying safe starts at the very beginning, when you are choosing your hotel – in cities, especially, some parts of town are going to be safer than others, the UK website 1st Class Protection reminds us;
- in this day and age, you have an array of online technology to help you scope out the hotel and its environs – look up the address on Google Maps, for instance, and familiarise yourself with the various street views and even “walk” through some of your likely routes from the hotel;
- the same resources can be helpful in making sure you know the location of – and will recognise potentially important places such as corner shops, chemists, hospitals, and police stations, suggests the website Survival Sullivan;
- while you’re doing your research, you’ll also see that some hotels appear to be more security-conscious than others – you might want to choose one that mentions the security training given to its staff and where rooms are entered via an electronic key card rather than an old-fashioned key;
- in times of potential emergency, you might want to ask whether the hotel has established specific plans for evacuation – say, in the event of civil strife or even a terrorist attack;
- let others – family or friends – know the details about where you’re staying, such as the name of the hotel, its address, telephone numbers, and email;
- when choosing your room, try to avoid those on the ground or first floors since they are typically less secure than those higher in the building – floors three to five, for example, are far enough off the ground to offer better security yet still low enough for emergency service ladders to reach if there’s a fire;
- as soon as you arrive in your room, check that any connecting doors, or doors to a balcony, and all the windows can be securely locked;
- remember to keep the door locked from the inside overnight – and flip across the security latch;
- to be doubly secure, you might even think about carrying a rubber doorstop or jam with you so that you can wedge this under the door from the inside – and make it practically impossible to open from the outside;
- most hotel rooms these days have their own safe for your personal use and put valuables such as any jewellery, cash, or your passport either in your room safe or ask reception to keep them in the hotel’s safe;
- pay attention to the fire escape notice and the route depicted on the back of your hotel room’s door;
- make a point of finding out the local numbers for emergency services such as an ambulance, a doctor, or the police;
- exercise some common sense when enjoying the hotel’s facilities – so, don’t disclose your room number to some stranger with whom you’ve been chatting in the bar – or, indeed, anywhere else;
- if you’re travelling by car, think carefully about where you park it – if the hotel has its own secured car park, all well and good, but if you need to park in the street, choose somewhere that’s well lit and as close as possible to the front doors of your hotel;
- don’t leave any forms of identification in the car – and that includes car rental agreements, discarded luggage tags, and old flight tickets;
- be smart on social media. Yes, it is lovely to share holiday photos, but try and hold off until you are back home – you never know who is looking at your social media.
Finally, you’ve made it away to a hard-earned break in the hotel of your choice. Of course, you want to relax and enjoy it – it’s the least you deserve. Knowing that you’ve taken all reasonable precautions to stay safe in your hotel might help to dispel unnecessary worries and let you truly relax.
Staying safe in hotels takes only the same kind of common sense, preparation, and awareness that you might want to use in any unfamiliar situation – the better prepared you are, the safer you are likely to be from any threat or danger.
