How do you book a hotel room? You either go online or use a travel agency. Some of you might even call the hotel directly.

But no matter how you make your reservation, there are three questions you must ask before you accept your room key to ensure you get the most out of your stay. Here are the questions and why you need to ask them.

Question 1: How close is my room to the building?
Most hotels are going through a rebuild or refurbishment cycle. In many cases, hotels close a wing or ground floor. So having that building information is crucial to keeping the room as far away from it as possible.

If you don’t ask this question, you have a good chance of getting the keys to the jackhammer kit. Another question: how close is my room to the ballroom? Why? You don’t want to sleep in a room located anywhere above the ballroom. There’s a good chance you’ll be woken up at 2am when they throw away all the bottles of wine and champagne from the event they held there a few hours ago.

Question 2: Can you give me a room between the second floor and the seventh floor?
High-rise view rooms are overrated. It takes longer to get to them – and longer to get back to the elevators, which may stop at many floors. But there is a more important reason to ask this question.

First, you don’t want to have a room on the first floor of any hotel for security reasons. Burglars – or worse – too easily gain easy access and exit strategies. But for security reasons, you need a room between the second and seventh floors. No fire department in the world can effectively and quickly extinguish a fire on the eighth floor of any building.

Smoke rises, and most deaths in fires are the result of smoke inhalation. However, if you insist on choosing a room with a great view on the upper floors – in case a fire breaks out and rescuers can’t reach you, you can have one.

Question 3: Can you tell me on which floors the booster pump is located?
When encountering this problem, the front desk staff will almost be puzzled. So help them – get them to call the hotel engineer. Because this important question is about the huge water pressure in the bathroom, everyone should aspire to.

Problem: No hotel in the world can maintain consistent, strong water pressure on every floor. The remedy for many hotels is to install additional booster pumps on different floors. The key is to find a room on the same floor with a booster pump.

If you do, you can open the door to the guest room, walk into the bathroom, turn on the faucet and the water will flow out at the pressure of a small fire hose.