Flight attendant shares ‘super useful’ hotel travel hack for checking under beds

A flight attendant has recommended that hotel guests throw a bottle under their beds when they enter their rooms in order to help check if anyone is hiding there.

Esther Sturrus, who works for Dutch airline KLM and regularly uploads travel-related videos to her TikTok account, shared the advice as part of a video on solo travel tips.

Tourists can be targeted by trespassers and intruders, especially when staying on the ground floor or in rooms that are easily accessible from outside.

If you make sure the bottle comes out of the other side, you can easily “check that no one is under the bed without looking”, according to her video.

The video also contains tips on storing toiletries, ‘dry cleaning’ your clothes using steam from the shower, and de-steaming the bathroom mirror.

Another video, detailing the first things she does when she enters her hotel room, was uploaded in October 2022 and has almost 39 million views. Tips include locking your door, closing the curtains and changing the air conditioning.

Other TikTok users have praised the tips. “Never even occurred to me that someone could be under the bed”, said one.

One user called the tips “super useful”, while another added that “flight attendants are the real MVPs”.

Ms Sturrus was also in the news in April after sharing her top 10 travel tips, one of which was to leave a shoe in the safe.

“This way you will never forget anything from your safe. You will notice when you want to leave that you are missing a shoe”, she said at the time.

Other hacks and tips have been less well-received. In March, TikTok user NDA shared a ‘hack’ he used where he bought three fully refundable tickets in the same row and then returned them less than an hour before take-off, meaning he got a whole row to himself. It split opinion at the time, with many saying it wouldn’t work due to overbooked flights and others calling unethical.