When you’re traveling for any reason, whether for business, for leisure, or with your family, you expect your hotel to be not only comfortable and relaxing but also safe. In reality, hotel robberies have been increasing over recent years, however.

Criminals can target hotels to get access to guestrooms while their occupants are away, stealing their belongings. There are also personal security risks that can be a problem for travelers.

Hotels and similar accommodations have to take the necessary steps to keep their premises safe and ensure guests are protected.

From a business standpoint, there are a lot of things hotels can do.

For example, they can check for proper identification from guests before they come into the building and train their desk staff to identify suspicious behavior. Hotels can think about hiring security guards, and they should also have surveillance equipment in place. Current and future employees should have background checks since threats can be internal.

Beyond what the hotel should be doing, the following are things that travelers should know if they’re going to be spending time in a hotel.

Personal Safety

Personal safety is a priority as you choose a hotel, and also during the time you’re actually staying there.

If you’re traveling alone, and especially as a woman, you have to be mindful of your personal safety, starting with your hotel.

The following are things to keep in mind that are specifically relevant to your personal safety.

Do in-depth research before choosing a place to stay. You want to make sure you know details about the location and whether or not there is a terrorist or crime threat. Look into whether women or tourists are frequently targeted. Empower yourself with knowledge before you travel.
Location is critical for hotel safety. Every city has parts of town where you might not want to stay, so avoid those.
Call ahead when you choose a place to stay to learn more about what the hotel does to keep guests safe. Ask whether there are security guards on-site at all times and whether the front desk constantly has someone working at it. You should also ask about the use of surveillance cameras.
Don’t stay on the ground floor. Try to stay a few floors up so that your room doesn’t have easy access to intruders, but you also don’t want to go too far up in case there’s a fire.
When you get your room number from the front desk, ask the attendant not to say it out loud but instead write it down because you never know who’s listening.
When you get to your room, inspect it to ensure the door locks work and that all the windows have locks that work as well.
Don’t open the door to strangers if you aren’t expecting them, even if someone claims to be a hotel employee. If someone comes to your door and says they’re an employee and you aren’t expecting them, call the front desk to verify.
When you do open the door for someone, keep the security chain on until you’re sure they’re a hotel employee.
Some travelers bring a rubber door stopper with them. There are also door stop alarms that you can use to alert you and everyone around you if someone tries to break into your room. If there’s a doorstop, it’s going to be extremely difficult, if not nearly impossible, for someone to force a hotel door open.

How Easy Is It For Someone to Break-In?

You may feel like it would be difficult for someone to break into a hotel room, but in reality, it’s not hard at all in most cases.

For example, depending on the type of lock, it can be broken into in a matter of seconds with something like a credit card or even a door hanger that you often see at hotels.

Electronic locks are vulnerable to hackers too.

In 2017, two employees of an international cybersecurity firm discovered because of a software flaw, electronic locks of millions of hotel rooms around the world could be hacked easily. Every hotel needed to install a patch manually to fix the problem, but there’s no research showing how many did.

If you lose a key to your room, ask for a new one rather than a duplicate. This will reprogram the door lock in the event that your key was stolen.

Don’t Assume Your Safe Is Actually Safe

Many hotels will have in-room safes available. You might put your valuables in there, with the assumption, of course, that they’re going to actually be safe, but is that always the case?

Most hotels have a way to get into their in-room safes with something like a master code or master key. They have this backup in case a guest loses access to the items they stored in the safe, but of course, this also means there are people who could get into it without you knowing.

Hotels tend to be protected by laws that prevent them from being responsible if something is stolen from a room. This includes items in your safe.

If you have valuables, using the safe of the front desk can be a better option, but you should make sure the items have insurance.

If your room is broken into, you should report it to hotel management right away. They’ll have you complete a report with details, and they may call the police.

If there’s an electronic door lock, you can ask to see when the room was accessed and by who, but this might not do much good if you were robbed by someone who stole your key.

The hotel isn’t going to reimburse you for your belongings in almost all cases since they aren’t legally required to, but they should assist you however they can.

Finally, if you can leave most of your valuables at home, then do it. The fewer things that can potentially be stolen from your hotel room, the better. If you’re traveling internationally, you don’t want to look flashy because that can be attractive to criminals as well.