All You Need Is A Towel For This Hack To Feel Safer In Any Hotel Room

Few things will put a damper on your holiday away from home faster than a hotel room break-in. When it happens while you're out exploring, it can leave you scrambling to replace everything that's been taken — an issue made even worse when you haven't sprung for travel insurance. But if they break in while you're still in the room, it can be downright terrifying. And that's exactly what happened to a pair of hotel guests when their Parisian resort was struck by a spate of burglaries in 2023 when thieves busted through a deadbolt with the couple inside the room.

No matter how secure your hotel room is, any extra barrier between you and intruders is appreciated. That's why every traveler needs to learn the viral travel security hack shared by flight attendant CiCi in the Sky via her TikTok account. To make her hotel room door even more difficult for intruders to gain entry into, CiCi simply nabs a small washcloth from the bathroom, looping it through the latch before closing it. This prevents sneaky burglars from using rubber bands, wires, and other clever workarounds to create a loop around the latch and open it from outside of a slightly cracked door.

As a woman who often travels alone for her job, CiCi in the Sky prioritizes hotel room safety everywhere she goes. As she wrote on her TikTok video, "My military father raised me and my sisters to be situationally aware and vigilant where ever we are," adding that, "We don't live in fear, we are cautious."

Posting a hotel room safety check routine CiCi says she learned from other industry professionals, the flight attendant insisted that checking one's room can be done in under a minute. CiCI begins by looking in the closet and shower before peering behind the curtain to make sure there is nobody lurking inside her room. Next, she picks up the sometimes "gross" hotel room phone to make sure it's working. Once CiCi is ready to shut her door, she sets out her privacy sign and flips down the peephole or jams it full of tissue for added security.

After using the hand towel hack to make sure her door latch is solidly closed, CiCi then shoves her suitcase behind the door as an additional barrier. With those bases covered, she turns on her TV at a reasonable volume to let would-be burglars know this room is occupied and not worth the trouble. "Not loud enough to disturb people," she explains. "Just a normal volume I would watch TV on regularly." Finally, she takes a moment to scan the fire exit map before turning in for the night.