Electricity in Your Hotel Room

In your hotel room, there may be an energy-saving device operated by your room key: you insert the flat card of the room key into a slot, and this activates all the electricity in your room, including lights, fan, and television. (See the photo to the left.) The slot is usually on the wall just inside the door of your hotel room.

The idea is that you will remove the card from the slot when you take your room key with you and leave your room for the day, shutting off all the electricity automatically and thus cutting hotel costs.

But what if you want to charge batteries in your computer, iPad, digital camera or other devices while you're out of your room? The batteries won't charge if all the electricity is shut off.

Try this: slide something into the card slot (I always take an old room card from any hotel, or a non-critical card like a frequent flier or shopping rewards card) to keep the power on in the room. In Jerusalem, my concierge, Ibrahim, showed me the trick that a cardboard nail file works like a charm.

On another trip, after flying for 24 hours, I entered my hotel room in Thailand only to have the lights turn out on me five minutes later. There was an unusual device on the wall but I had been given a good old fashioned key not a card. Perplexed I trudged back to the desk to ask what was up. They said put the key in it. So I stuck in the key and walked back to my suitcase, minutes later, lights out again. In exasperation, I said "you have gotta be kidding me" --- tried again and you guessed it, lights out, "really?"  After three or four failed attempts I realized they didn't literally mean the key but rather the little "fob" I thought was a key chain. I blame sleep deprivation for not figuring it out sooner but lesson learned.  In older hotels you may need to use a "fob" instead of a card and if that is the case you are out of luck and will need to recharge only when you are in the room. 


Disclosure: Bear in mind that some of the links in this post are affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase I will earn a commission. Keep in mind that I link these companies and their products because of their quality and not because of the commission I receive from your purchases. The decision is yours, and whether or not you decide to buy something is completely up to you.