How to Baby-proof a Hotel Room or Airbnb (16 Tips)

“Holy smokes,” I thought, as we settled into our “entire home” Airbnb vacation rental in Litchfield, Connecticut, with our 7-month old. “If we were here with a crawling or walking baby, I have no idea how we wouldn’t be freaking out.”

That’s because we were in an Airbnb outfitted with collected art, breakable vases and memorabilia and lots of vintage furniture. I was even worried that I was going to break something! If we had come there with a toddler, I would’ve wanted to be SURE that we’d leave the place in the condition we experienced when we arrived!

In this article, find out how to baby-proof or toddler-proof your vacation rental, Airbnb or hotel room. There are a few handy tricks I can lend you as a traveling parent, and hopefully you (and your accommodation) will come out of your next vacation experience unscathed!

Ask the accommodation manager/staff about baby safety

If you have specific concerns in regard to the room safety or setup prior to booking, reach out to a real human who can help!

At a hotel, this may be the front desk, and at a vacation rental or Airbnb, this could be the property manager or owner. It might be the same person who helps you tack on a reservation of a travel crib, like the we got for our trip with a toddler to Mexico City.

Good questions to ask are some of the following:

• Do you provide baby gates for tops or bottoms of the stairs?
• Are there any breakable items or irreplaceable decorations that could be removed for our stay (so that we don’t risk damaging anything)?
• Which pieces of furniture are bolted to the walls?
• And other questions you may have (consider your child’s habits or antics at home)

Look closely at photos in the listing before reserving

If you’re a parent, chances are you’ve got eagle eyes already for “things that can hurt my baby/toddler” when you are away from home.

When we reserved our Mexico City Airbnb, we actually reserved it based on its location, price and availability. I think we would’ve reserved it even if I had noticed some sharp table edges or other non-toddler-friendly things in the photos, and we would’ve figured out how to baby-proof.

Regardless of this, we lucked out! Our Airbnb apartment rental had coffee tables with rounded edges, a couch that was low to the floor, a bean bag chair, very few glass or breakable decor items and no excess things we really had to worry about. We mostly kept our child out of the kitchen and bathroom, and scattered toys and books all throughout the living room as things to do. (Photo below!)

If you’re looking at photos of hotels and vacation rentals, deciding which would suit your toddler family lifestyle best, think about a few things:

• Furniture that could topple over
• Furniture with sharp edges, or furniture made of glass
• Lots of steps, levels or stairwells
• Lots of light carpets, light-colored upholstered dining seating or other things that may be very hard to clean, should your child make a mess (and then you’d be billed by the owner)

For hotels, there’s a lot less to worry about because so much furniture is immovable. The main concerns with hotels are ones I’ll mention below like heavy (or glass) bathroom doors that slam fast.

Bring a portable baby gate (or rent one)

If you’ll be staying in an Airbnb with steps or staircases and if this is already causing concern before you leave home, consider bringing a portable baby gate. Portable options for baby gates don’t require any hardware to install, and stay in a stairwell frame by screwing pressure knobs into the doorway. They can also be used to contain your baby or toddler into a particular room in a vacation rental house.

If you’ll be flying and can’t travel with a portable baby gate like a road trip with a baby would allow, consider renting whatever you need on a site like BabyQuip. A baby gear rental site like this one helps create a home-like experience while you’re away, and the great thing is you don’t have to pack any of the items you can rent (high chairs, baby baths, travel cribs and more).

Try BabyQuip here.

Survey breakable items at low levels

Like I mentioned in the introduction to this article, we stayed at an Airbnb in the Litchfield Hills of Connecticut for a short vacation when our daughter was 7 months and (lucky for us) pre-crawling at the time. The home was full of the owner’s collected art, vases, pottery, heavy books and glassware. It was beautiful, and totally vibey, but would’ve been a headache if I had a toddler who loved to run around and explore, or TWO toddlers!

My tip is to look for the most breakable items at the lowest levels where your baby or toddler could pull them off a shelf and break them. This includes coffee table deco: are there small glass vases, glass coasters, glass tchotchkes or even just things made of ceramic or china that could crack and present dangers?

Move these (and take photos beforehand so that you can put them back when you depart) to another room or to another level, like higher-up shelves in built-ins or cabinets.

Check what’s in the bottom kitchen/bathroom cabinets

While people don’t typically leave knives in the bottom kitchen cabinets, the vacation rental or Airbnb owner may have the trash there, or hazardous cleaning fluids, trash bags (choking hazards) or heavy pots and pans, or even blenders with blades. You really never know.

My best practice is to get to these before your child does, and load them onto the kitchen counter where they can’t be reached, so you and your partner can figure out a plan of where to store them during your stay.

For bathrooms, it’s similar: there may be several bottles of cleaning chemicals in the bathroom cabinet, or simply, just rolls of toilet paper that you don’t want your toddler unrolling (because then you’d wind up with no TP when you need some!).

Load the contents of bottom cabinets onto the higher surfaces and find “resting places” for them during your stay.

Use painter’s tape and rubber bands

Like we mention in our list of the best baby travel accessories, painter’s tape might be your best friend as a traveling parent. It can be used for playing games on flights, taping up garbage bags for blackout curtains and of course, taping over outlet covers and/or tying up curtains or blinds cords when you arrive at the hotel.

If you plan to use painter’s tape to cover outlet covers, the only thing is that older toddlers can rip it off. Younger babies may consider it as a dead end if they had planned to stick tiny fingers in the hotel room outlets.

And then there’s rubber bands: use them to keep bathroom cabinets and kitchen cabinets closed, or to tie up loose things in the room like cords.

Bring your own outlet cover protectors

This one’s easy! If your child is interested in jamming things into electrical outlets, bring a sack of your own outlet cover protectors for baby-proofing. These barely take up any space in luggage, and are well worth it if it keeps your little ones from getting shocked or electrocuted.

I recommend the simple Wappa Baby ones, or the Safety 1st covers that we use at home. If you’re concerned about packing light with a baby or toddler, bring a selection of only 5-6 of them, and use them for outlets where your child is spending the most time.

Replace items at floor level with things from your packing

What I mean by this is if there are breakable vases or heavy coffee table books that could slide off the bottom of a bookshelf, tidy them elsewhere and replace them with an engaging toy from your luggage.

We do this at home! Instead of plant pots or ceramics, we put colorful toddler toys on the lower levels of bookshelves, where they can be grabbed and played with.

Check drawers in nightstands and unplug room phones

It’s hard to say what might be in the drawers in the nightstands at your Airbnb or hotel room. It used to be predictable: a Bible, and a pen with a pad. Nowadays, there may be some tech gadgets, like remotes, or small treats left by the hotel staff for you.

Get to these before your child does, to be sure that whatever is inside the toddler-level drawers is safe.

Create a designated play area in your room

In our Airbnb in Mexico, we were lucky that the entire place was pretty toddler-proofed when we arrived (and we had barely thought of this as we were booking). We made the corner near the sliding glass doors into our toddler’s designated area, where we kept the real winner of our trip, SQUIGZ, for endless fun playing.

This mostly kept our toddler out of the way when we were cooking meals or prepping the bath.

Keep the parents’ bedroom door closed (and use door locks)

This one is simple! If you’re staying at a vacation rental where parents get their own room, lead all breakables and non-child-proofed items there for the duration of your stay and keep the door CLOSED.

Better yet, bring 1-2 baby-proofing doorknob locks (we use this kind at home).

See what the safety deal is with the pool or hot tub

Your vacation rental may have a pool or hot tub. It’s time to employ your best pool safety and water safety techniques! Seriously though, the key here is to keep your child away from the pool or hot tub, especially if they’re already full of water.

Ask ahead of time if the pool is gated, or if there is a pool fence around it. Once you get to the vacation rental home, make sure the fence cannot be opened if you were to be looking away for a few seconds.

And for hot tubs, figure out how they turn on. This is for if you have a curious (or mischievous) toddler who can get into trouble as long as you’re tied up in another room.

Find out if balcony doors lock (they might not!)

The one qualm I had about our Mexico Airbnb apartment was that reviews of the unit said the balcony sliding glass doors did not lock, at all.

Sure, this is concerning for intruders coming in at night (I tried not to think about it for the entire time we were there), but also concerning for our toddler being able to slide open the doors if they didn’t lock.

Luckily, the balcony itself was not somewhere where our toddler was dying to go without us, and the doors were quite heavy to slide, for a person who was only 20 pounds. But were our child able to get to that balcony on her own, I’d be worried that she could slide out the horizontal bars on the railing.

My tip is to find out if your balcony doors lock, and how. Then, keep them locked, so that little people don’t get out to balconies, especially if they’re levels up from the street or the hotel pool.

Hide curtain pulls, and tie up long curtains

Long curtains that are more delicate is what you’ll probably find at vacation rentals rather than hotels. Lots of hotels have thick and strong curtains that have held up through THOUSANDS of guests over the years.

But it really does vary on what kind of curtain pulls your room will have. If the curtain pulleys are long, reachable and/or the type that is like stringy ropes or chains, tie those up on the wall with painter’s tape as fast as you can.

Not only do toddlers love to play with things that dangle, but these can be choking hazards as well, when you’re staying at a hotel with a baby.

Put a door stopper or cushion at doorways

This goes for all of the following: bathroom doors, closet doors (or sliding closet doors) and doors to second rooms or hallways. Sometimes just using a shoe works, in a door threshold, to prevent little fingers or toes from getting crushed when a door slams. Some of those newer hotel bathroom doors are SOLID and slam FAST!

If you forget to use a shoe, put something like a stuffed animal at the base of doors that may slam, or a rolled-up baby blanket or soft toy.

Put everything back before checking out

In the case of our very “breakable” Airbnb, had our baby been crawling and had we stored everything made of glass at higher levels or in another room, we would’ve had to “put the place back together.”

If you’ve moved decorative items, or if you’ve moved furniture to create barriers, remember to put everything back to its original spot before checking out and locking the door behind you.

Conclusion

Baby-proofing a hotel room or Airbnb is not going to be as perfect as your baby-proofing at home. As long as you can avoid being charged damage fees by the property, consider it a success if everyone’s safe and happy every day of your vacation!