Go Niche

WITH ALL these terrorist travel alerts flying around the place, is there anything you can do to protect yourself before booking a hotel?

First up, be prepared to ask the reservations staff some hard questions about its security policies, including whether or not staff have undertaken security and emergency training recently.

Travel website concierge.com recommends that you ask if they run background checks on all members of staff and whether they have security personnel on duty round the clock.

After that, according to Chris Grniet of Kroll Security, a firm that provides security training for both hotels and travellers, book a room on floors four through six.

These are high enough to reduce the risk of petty crime but low enough to ensure easy exit in case of emergency. In most places fire rescue ladders can only reach as high as the sixth floor.

Avoid rooms beside stairwells or elevators on the basis that these are the rooms the villainous will strike first.

Don’t just check where exits are either, walk the route, making a count of the doors between your room and them, in case you have to make your way out in darkness. Always pack a torch.

Where possible, avoid hotels with underground car parking. Rooms facing the front may be more vulnerable to car bombs.

Finally, check the buildings around your hotel too. Time was when proximity to the embassy belt was a plus. Not so much anymore.

Indeed, if you are concerned about visiting major cities you might be better off by-passing big, well-known hotels in favour of smaller boutique or locally owned ones which, the security experts seem to agree, are less likely to be targeted.