In short: No, hotel Wi-Fi isn't safe. You might think your hotel room's password-protected network is nearly as secure as your private Wi-Fi network at home. But despite common protections, hotel Wi-Fi security is very lax, making it one of the least trustworthy types of public Wi-Fi.

Hotel Internet is generally not private and should be treated as a public network, similar to what you would find in a coffee shop or airport. When you connect to hotel Wi-Fi, your data passes through a central server managed by the hotel or a third-party provider. Without a VPN, the network administrator (or a sophisticated hacker on the same network) can potentially see which websites you are visiting, although they cannot see the specific content of encrypted (HTTPS) traffic. However, "Man-in-the-Middle" (MITM) attacks are a real risk in hotels, where a bad actor sets up a "twin" network with the hotel's name to intercept your login credentials or financial data. Additionally, many hotels use "captive portals" for login, which can sometimes track your device's MAC address and browsing habits for marketing purposes. To ensure true privacy, it is highly recommended to use a Virtual Private Network (VPN), which encrypts all your traffic from the device level, making it unreadable to anyone else on the hotel network.