Always Leaving Your Charger Behind In Hotel Rooms? Try This Genius Hack
It is a truth universally acknowledged that guests leave items in hotel rooms all the time. In fact, a survey conducted by G6 Hospitality found that as much as 54% of guests have confessed to accidentally leaving some of their belongings in hotels.
Guests often leave clothes, toiletries, and underwear, which are admittedly pretty easy to recoup. But some also unintentionally leave things that are quite valuable, like electronics, chargers, jewelry, watches, and hair-styling tools. Because of this, around 35% of guests go out of their way to return to the hotel to retrieve their belongings. Some would even travel back an average of 110 miles to claim wallets, 95 miles for gadgets, and 30 miles for chargers, according to the survey.
If you're admittedly a Forgetful Fiona and have the propensity to leave things behind, there's a hack you can try to avoid doing so. If you often forget to pack your chargers when leaving a hotel room, you don't want to drive more than 30 miles just to retrieve one, do you? What you can do to ensure you remember it is tie it to your keys instead.
Tie your charging cable to your keys
Chargers are crucial to staying connected when you travel, so the last thing you want is to lose it in the middle of the trip. According to a viral video from TikTok user Armen Adamjan of @creative_explained, you'll be less likely to leave your charger behind if you tether it to your keys, which is one of the things many of us can't really do without.
"Put your keys, car keys, through your phone charger like this so that when it's time to check out you'll remember both," he explained in the video, along with a brief demonstration of looping the cable through a keychain. It seems like a no-brainer hack, but it's a pretty nifty trick if you're the type to forget things all the time (don't worry, we get it).
And in case you ever forget your charging block at home or elsewhere in your trip, Adamjan suggests using the back of the hotel TVs since those typically have USB ports you can use as an interim charger. This trick may not juice up your phone as fast as a standard charger does, but it can be a decent alternative in the event that you don't have a charging block or adapter available.
If you end up leaving your charger — or anything — behind, don't panic
Leaving behind things in a hotel room can be a bummer, but it's not the end of the world. A Hilton spokesperson told Smarter Travel that hotels typically have their own policies when it comes to lost and found items, with some even going the extra mile and having dedicated service desks for them. "Some properties have extended lost and founds — we also have dedicated customer care support lines to help assist 24/7, but most properties will keep lost items for a certain amount of time before donating any unclaimed items," they noted.
What's more, an executive housekeeper at the Grove in London shared with The Caterer that they even mail left-behind belongings for free or hand-deliver them if the guests live close enough. "Many of our guests live locally so we have also been known to hand-deliver items, especially if a child has left behind their special toy and won't be able to sleep without it. (That one was a 40-mile round trip)," they shared.
If these services aren't offered by your hotel, though, you can simply ask them to mail the lost item to you. They may require payment in exchange (you're the one who left something at their property, after all), but hey, at least you'll get your stuff back.