The first thing you might want to do after entering your hotel room is throw yourself onto the bed and sleep.
Especially if you’ve had a stressful travel experience.
But before you kick off your shoes and relax – make sure you take a moment and do these things first.
Check For Bedbugs
If you did your homework, hopefully you checked out the reviews of your hotel before you arrived.
Perhaps you even ran it through the national bedbug registry to make sure it wasn’t flagged as being a bedbug haven.
But regardless, you should still check your hotel room immediately upon entering to make sure there aren’t signs of bedbugs.
Remember to check the seams of the bed for little black dots or red blood stains and don’t forget to look on the nightstands and furniture.
Look For Hidden Cameras
Ever feel like someone’s watching you?
Well, you may be right.
Reader’s Digest reported a whopping 11-percent of people had found hidden cameras in their Airbnb.
And these days, they are much more stealth and can be hidden inside an alarm clock or smoke detector.
Do yourself a favor and download an app like Fing which alerts you to any secret devices hidden on a network and can usually identify what they are – printer, camera, etc.
Check The Alarm Clock
Yes, some people actually still use the good ol’ fashioned alarm clocks on the nightstand instead of their phone alarms.
So, how annoying would it be to finally fall asleep – only to be abruptly jolted awake by an incessantly beeping alarm clock?
Do yourself a favor – and make sure the digital alarm clock is set to “Off.”
Sanitize
Just because your hotel room may look clean on the surface – it doesn’t mean it actually is.
In fact, several parts of your room were likely not cleaned in between guests (if cleaned ever) like light switches, toilet handles, and the TV remote.
Take a moment and sanitize the places touched most in your room – and put an ice bag or shower cap over the TV remote before you use it.
Still not convinced?
A recent report showed that 81-percent of hotel surfaces had some sort of fecal matter on them when swabbed.
Bust out the Lysol wipe already!
Sleep Easy
There’s nothing better than an afternoon nap after a weary day of traveling – especially if you’re staying at a hotel that takes sleep seriously.
Just make sure you do these 4 things first.
And don’t forget to check out our tips for the ultimate hotel hacks!
What protocols do you follow when checking into a hotel room?
Do you have any tips for fellow travelers?
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