SOLO TRAVEL

Cartoon of a frazzled, dirt-smudged hiker waving both arms for help on a wooded shoreline beside her startled terrier, as a fisherman in a small boat approaches across the water.

No more digital detoxes? Why you should keep your phone with you when you travel

by

Michelle Girasole thought she knew Rhode Island’s Beavertail State Park well enough to leave her phone in the car. It was a warm summer morning, and she wanted to catch the sunrise with her terrier, Scooter, and enjoy a few minutes without calls, texts, or notifications. Then she followed Scooter off the path and lost her bearings. She spent the next nine hours stranded, with no water, no sunscreen, and no way to call for help, until a fisherman finally spotted her on the shoreline. “If I had my phone,” she says, “none of that would have happened.” Her ordeal is a warning about the travel industry’s latest wellness obsession, the digital detox, which hotels and tour operators are selling as the only way to truly be present. Nearly every traveler says they want to disconnect. But there is a reason a row of security and medical-evacuation experts say that, for anyone without a private fixer, ditching your phone is not relaxation. It is something closer to recklessness.

from leaving the tv on to packing door alarms, travelers are getting innovative about hotel room security. learn how to enhance your safety on the road.

New ways to make your hotel room safe

by

Walter Meyer is so concerned about hotel safety that he always brings Dave along. Dave is not real. Whenever Meyer leaves his room, he turns the TV on low, preferably a talk show, so anyone listening at the door hears voices and assumes the room is occupied. On his way out he calls back to the empty room, “Dave, are you sure you don’t want anything? Okay, I’ll be back in a little bit.” The idea is to make a watcher believe someone is inside and will return soon, even when no one is. Meyer is not alone in getting inventive. Safety now ranks at the top of travelers’ concerns, and the strategies people use range from the charmingly low-tech, like Dave, to a small kit of gadgets the savvy traveler never packs without. Security experts and hoteliers say there are specific, simple moves that make a room far harder to breach, starting with the things you can do before you even unlock the door.