While nabbing a hotel room on a high floor with a beautiful view may sound like a great idea, one travel expert is advising against it for a very practical reason.
Travel risk expert Lloyd Figgins shares with The Sun that one of the most important things to think about when staying in a hotel room is the “risk of fire,” and what floor you are on could be a matter of life and death.
“When you arrive in a hotel, you’re in an unfamiliar environment which you think is safe,” he tells The Sun. “The problem comes that if there were to be a fire alarm go off, what do we do next?”
Figgins says guests should actually walk the fire route when they get to a hotel and also count the doors to the escape. He also advises against booking any room above the fourth floor, but not below the second.
“Make sure you are staying between the second and fourth stories of the hotel because the fire department ladder rarely reaches above the fourth story,” he says. “Anything below this is targeted by burglars.”
For safety, he also advises against ever saying your room number out loud once inside, and to make sure staff simply write down your room number so burglars who may be lurking in the lobby don’t hear it and target you.
Now if we have completely scared you into staying high up in a hotel, let’s now startle you with an underwater hotel.
Australia has its first underwater hotel called ReefSuites.
It’s located off Hardy Reef and touts two suites situated beneath a floating pontoon 15 feet underwater. The floor-to-ceiling windows allow you to watch over 15-hundred species of sea life float by with the Great Barrier Reef as a backdrop.
It sounds like a stay would cost a fortune, but actually, it’s only $550 a night. Getting to the underwater hotel is a bit of a challenge, requiring a 90-minute plane ride from Brisbane, plus three hours on a boat.
We didn’t ask our safety expert which floor to stay at with an underwater hotel, but I imagine this is the type of accommodation he wouldn’t stay in.
