After spending much time in hotels during our days of being homeless, we may have learned a thing or two about making a hotel feel like home. While this isn’t easy in hotels like our Super 8 White River Junction stay or the Super 8 Groton we stayed at, we were able to enjoy White River Inn & Suites which offers a little more room to make your hotel feel like home.

How can I make my hotel more comfortable?

Today I’m going to share some tricks to make your next hotel stay feel like home. Whether you’re staying for a night, a weekend, or a week, these tips & tricks will have your family feeling comfortable in no time.

Fixtures & Equipment

The first step to making your hotel more comfortable is to check its fixtures and equipment. Many hotels have an entrance where you’ll find a seating area or welcome area, a business center, and sometimes the breakfast area.

You’ll want to visualize how comfortable this “hang out” area will be for your family and what you can do to make it more home-like during your stay. A company like https://bciworldwide.com/services/ffe-installation/ works hard to ensure a hotel’s fixtures & equipment are up to par with the hotel standards.

Hotel Beds – Comfy or Not?

We’ve slept on some pretty not-so-comfortable beds during our homeless days in hotels, but it was much more comfortable than the bench seat in my van. Making a hotel comfortable is all about perspective sometimes, like in our situation; sleeping in the vehicle on bench seats or in a hotel bed?

Obviously the hotel bed regardless of softness or firmness was more comfortable than our vehicle bench seats. Bring your kid’s favorite blanket or plush animal so they have something familiar for their night of slumber in your hotel while traveling.

Many hotels ensure that their accommodations are met to standards for their local state and town requirements. The company https://atlanticscale.com/calibration-weights/mass-metrology-lab/ makes sure things are calibrated for accurate weight and mass measurements.

Pack an Airbed

If you’re with more family than beds, consider packing an airbed. We used that for our stays in Super 8 White River Junction and our stay in the Baymont Inn & Suites because there were two beds and three of us.

Research airbeds and pick one that provides comfort, quality, and affordability so that you can have it blown up on the floor near your beds in the hotel room. Just be sure the size will fit, we had to use a twin size airbed and sometimes even that size was a tight fit.

Make it Fun

During our times staying in a hotel versus a campsite or our vehicles, we tried to make the suites and hotel rooms much like home. Since you’re not homeless, you’re traveling to a hotel for vacation, bring items like a gaming chair from https://www.andaseat.ca/ to make it comfy for the kids and family.

A gaming chair is an excellent way to make your hotel feel comfortable when you’re going to be in a hotel for longer durations. We were staying in hotels for a few days at a time up to a week whenever we could get a good deal.

We had our Wii U and other items to make the hotel more comfortable for our homeless teens. As a family who was homeless for five months but always made our teens comfortable, I can honestly say that it’s easy to make a hotel stay more comfortable.

Keep Room Secure

I’m OCD about locking doors and windows. I’ll admit during our first days being homeless in tents, not having a secure door at night was hard! You can’t lock a tent door, really.

When we ventured to stay a weekend in a hotel at White River Inn & Suites for our first hotel stay, it was nice. I could make sure the room was locked with the two locks on the door and make sure the windows were sealed shut.

Regardless of what star hotel you stay in, people are crazy in this world, so be sure to keep your hotel room tight and secure at all times.

Can you bring food into a hotel room?

Another way to make your hotel more comfortable is to bring your own food. We were allowed to bring our own food into the hotel, but I’ve found some hotels don’t allow that.

In many hotels you can find a menu of places that deliver, now that’s living large! We went from sleeping in tents at campgrounds to being able to order food and eat it at a table. That was an upgrade.

I’d check the hotel rules and make sure bringing outside food is fine. It’s usually absolutely fine to bring food into a hotel room.

I hope that you’ll take my tips and allow them to guide you forward to enjoy your next hotel stay with kids. These tips will help your entire family feel like home even though you’re out exploring new places!