Hotel security: Don't Panic

We stay in unfamiliar surroundings all the time, but what happens when there’s an emergency? Tom Otley investigates the lengths hotels companies take to safeguard their guests’ welfare

If there’s one thing more disorientating than waking in an unfamiliar hotel room, it’s waking in an unfamiliar hotel room to the wailing of an alarm. Certain noises, while unwelcome, are expected: your travel clock waking you for an early morning flight, the hotel phone or even your mobile phone left on in case someone needed to reach you from home. But a loud, insistent and unfamiliar ringing or siren in the middle of the night,well, it can mean only one thing: you’re in a hotel emergency.  The more you travel, the more often it happens to you, and I admit,my natural and irresponsible impulse is to ignore it, though depending on the volume, it’s not always easy.  The alarm at One Aldwych hotel in London, for instance, is so loud it practically picks you out of bed and throws you out into the corridor, I speak from experience. Still, by the time I had managed to get to my feet, the alarm had stopped.And there’s the reason we ignore them: because so often, they are false.  Of course, to the safety experts, there is no such thing as false alarms, just practice drills, or as Lynn Hood, director of operations for City Inn Hotels puts it,“alarms with good intent”.

“Our buildings are very highly specified,” Hood says.“And with new buildings in particular, the fire alarm tends to be sensitive and goes off more than it should.We don’t like waking people up in the middle of the night.  We know it might affect their day going forward, but sometimes it happens, and it’s better to err on the side of caution. They might well get a bottle of wine on check out for the inconvenience. The point is, though, we have their welfare as the uppermost concern.”

There are several different types of emergency, however: fire, natural disaster, terrorism…. In fact, thinking about it can be a worrying exercise, which is one of the reasons you hope a hotel has done a lot of the thinking for you. But do hotels take great pains over health and safety?

Absolutely, says Paul Moxness, director, Corporate Safety & Security for Rezidor SAS Hospitality (owner of brands such as the Radisson SAS, Regent and Park Inn hotels).  “We have a four corner programme: guest safety, which is limiting the risk of the guest becoming sick or injured and providing safe accommodation, employee safety, so it is a safe work place, operational security, which is protecting the owner’s investment by having uninterrupted hotel operation and fallback procedures to limit any incidents in length and degree, and lastly fire safety.”

Angus Hamilton, director of corporate Security, Shangri-La Hotels & Resorts, says: “If you knew how much our hotels invested in safety and security: extensive CCTV systems, cameras, digital recordings, you wouldn’t worry so much.” In some countries, Indonesia and the Middle East for example, he says, even the government has a hand in vetting the security agencies that are allowed to work with hotels. “In Jakarta, the security firm we chose to work with had to be approved by the local authorities.”

With the Marriott group,whose Jakarta property was the victim of a terrorist attack in 2003, the mindset, says Alan Orlob, vicepresident, Corporate Security, Marriott Lodging International, “is to be very forward leaning…it’s always about what could happen versus what has happened”. Thus, table top and role playing exercises during conferences have become standard fare. “It helps our executives understand the dynamics of a (certain) crisis situation and the different issues involved.”

“We’re always doing a safety audit,” says Hamilton.“Three times a month, each employee shift goes a drill – fire evacuation, bomb threat, what have you.” Even for the cynical amongst us, the obvious point is that hotels are there to make money for themselves and their owners, so keeping the place open and as full as possible is obviously paramount, as is preventing employees and guests from injuring themselves or becoming injured.Obviously, if a hotel suffers a fire, that will hit, not only the revenue of the management company, but also the owner’s return on investment, the hotel’s interest happily, coincides with our own.

As a result, many hotel companies call in outside expertise. Eduard Maze Sencier  Debroville, is business development manager for Crisis and Security Management at  Control Risks Group.“We do security audits for hotel groups worldwide, look at compliance and help them devise appropriate programmes. To do so,we classify the various threats these hotels are facing and then devise a strategy to mitigate those threats.We can go as far as training the security teams. For the hotels, it’s important at every level.We even supply a probable estimated financial loss should something take place so they can get a decent insurance quote.”

“Fire safety is important for two reasons,” says Paul Moxness.“Firstly because it is the biggest single daily threat that a hotel faces, and secondly, because it’s the most regulated aspect we have and there is a fair degree of variance between countries because there are few international regulations to tell us what we should or should not be doing, they are all national or local regulations.”

To take one example of this variance: the regulations concerning evacuation are different from country to country. In the UK, for instance, if the alarm goes off, everyone has to leave the building. In other countries, the view is that if there is a fire in reception, the last thing you want is everyone walking down 20 floors or more from their rooms, so there would be a zoned evacuation from the incident area, while everyone else is deemed safe.After all, a modern hotel is designed to limit smoke and fire.

Moxness also points out that: “The local response by the fire team is geared to the response from the hotel, so there’s no right or wrong.And in the case of the UK, the stairwells will be very well protected and will have a higher smoke and fire rating with double doors into the stairwell and so on.” “A modern fire alarm system gives a quick indication that something abnormal is happening in a specific location in the building,whether there is a higher than normal particle content in the air or a rapid rise in temperature,”Moxness says.

So what should a business traveller do when they first check into a hotel? Orlob ofMarriott counsels: “You need to have security awareness. Treat your hotel room as if it was your own home, and don’t just open the door to strangers.”

Hamilton says Shangri-La staff are trained to instruct guests on the location of the fire escape and the emergency torch in the room.  Says Hood of London’s City Hotels: “When walking around a hotel for the first time, the obvious thing is to ensure that corridors all have a good light level so you can be confident in spaces you are not familiar with.You want nice wide corridors, well lit staircases for fire exit purposes, and good decanting areas where people can spill out and then be directed to gather in one set area.

“In our London City Inn property, for example, we have Arts Street running alongside, which is under cover. In other properties where people would be out in the open, we have the same blankets used for the marathons to protect ladies and children, and also some slippers for those who have come down dazed and aren’t wearing footwear.’

Two further points are that the hotel is safe –  the materials in the room are slow burn and the staff are well trained. “The most important thing is to exercise control in an emergency,” says Hood.“The evacuation plan needs to be controlled by a leader or leaders so people feel guided. In the UK, there is a statutory obligation for all the staff every six months must go through fire training, with night staff going every quarter.

Paul Moxness says: “There’s a lot of expertise on where you should go and where you should stay and what you should look for.We have taken advice ourselves from different companies and had reviews done. The problem is that it’s a changing risk picture from place to place, so, for instance, when it comes to terrorism in some hotels you are able to pull up in front because there’s little or no fear from car bombs, while others the opposite decision has been made.

“We try and look at it property by property level – what is the building like, what’s the neighbourhood like, what’s the country like.  In some countries, such as Kuwait, we have taken every precaution, and in others such as northern Sweden, we haven’t.”

Alan Orlob recalls that before the bombing incident at the JWMarriott Jakarta, security measures such as inspecting cars were already in place.“If we hadn’t been that prepared, the damage would have been worse.” Since that tragedy, all hotels in the Indonesian capital examine vehicles a good distance away from the main entrance.

The International Hotel and Restaurant Association recently held a global council of its members of security, which is put under three main heads: terrorism, natural disasters and pandemics. CEO David McMillan says:

“We all market on safety, but not in a competitive way. The intent is to share and all become wiser so we can make available this information so people within the industry can look at the best in the industry are doing.  The good news is that hotel companies are ahead of many other industries when it comes to considering the safety of both their employees and their guests.

In fact, research by business TMC Portman Travel found that 95% of businesses fail to equip their employees with clear safe travel guidelines, despite travellers becoming increasingly fearful for their safety when they travel, both at home and abroad. The company this year launched the Portman Seal, an accreditation scheme which encourages hotels to take all reasonable steps to protect their guests. The seal will be awarded to establishments that meet a strict set of criteria, including the provision of CCTV, safes, secure check-in procedures and room allocation.  Bob Govan, marketing and development director of Portman Travel comments:“We launched the Portman Seal as a direct response to the increased level of insecurity that business travellers are experiencing.  Security in hotels is only one aspect of travel safety, of course, but we felt it was a smart way for us to make a contribution to travellers’ peace of mind.”

At the moment, however, the scheme applies to UK hotels only, Portman has found that London is now considered the fourth most dangerous city to do business (after Baghdad, Johannesburg and Lagos), perhaps, it still fulfils a need.

In contrast, hotels evaluate risk on a daily basis and take special precautions – some are visible, such as screening on entry or vehicles checks. Paul Moxness observes: “I think travellers take comfort in such visible procedures, though obviously, in other cases, the measures are invisible.”

Jarlath Lynch, general manager of the Makati Shangri-La, agrees, saying he hasn’t received any real negative feedback about procedures such as the inspection of belongings and sniffing of luggage by their resident canines “The staff, even those from outsourced agencies, undergo a special Shangri-La training course, which imparts courtesy when dealing with guests. This make visitors comfortable, and some of them even have a favourite among the dogs!”

Shangri-La’s security chief,Angus Hamilton says the situation is the same in Jakarta, which boasts some of the most stringent hotel safety tactics in the region, from inspecting vehicles a distance to asking guests to open their luggage before check in. They don’t feel inconvenienced, he says,“as it shows them the hotel is taking their safety very seriously”.  It’s not just the hotels that are acting on behalf of travellers. In the case of terrorism, the host countries themselves obviously play a big part, since if a bomb goes off in a country, though the hotel concerned will obviously be affected, so will the country as a whole. For that reason, the hotel chains find that they get a lot of support from respective governments, and also cooperate with one another to share best practice and intelligence.  Moxness says:“None of us are competing on this – more guests survive in our hotels –the brand is not just Rezidor, it’s Jordan or the Middle East then the whole hotel brand.Have a huge common interest with our counterparts in other companies, since they are hit if one of our hotels are hit in that country.”

A lot of business travellers don’t have the full control over where they stay – they will be put in the hotel of the chain that their company has an agreement with. But whether you made the choice of the hotel, or your company or travel management company did, you may have a choice over the room or the floor you stay on. So which room on what floor should you choose? Which is statistically safest? Talk to business travellers and many will tell you it’s between the fifth and the eighth floors. The reason? Lower than the fifth is vulnerable to burglars, higher than eighth is difficult for the fire services to reach using external ladders.  Throw in the oft repeated tip that you should stay in a room facing the rear of the hotel (again because of car bombs), and you begin to have a theory of where to stay. It’s not one that Moxness agrees with.

“I’ve heard that one articulated by safety experts, but when you ask them is it documented that it is safer or if there are any statistics to back it up, there aren’t any. They say it because everyone says it, but does that logic hold empirically? There’s certainly no way I’d advocate in staying in only half of the rooms in our hotels, or an even smaller fraction.” The point here is that all the rooms are equally safe.

Marc Lannoy, chairman Europe,Middle East and Africa Region Safety and Security Council for Starwood Hotels, says: “The current state of preparedness is really as a result of a number of (terrorism) incidents – Mombassa in Kenya in 2002, Farah Hotel in Casablanca, May 2003,Marriott in Jakarta,August 2003, Hilton Taba in Egypt, October 2005, Radisson SAS in Amman in Jordan,November 2005.

“As a result, at Starwood, we formed a preparedness terrorism team, a group of 12 people from all divisions, who meet on a regular basis. The first task the team carried out was a terrorism risk assessment which was a survey sent to all our hotels to see what the situation was for each property.

“We then created a matrix and designed a classification for each hotel: guarded, medium, high and extreme, and this depended on the location of the hotel, type of customers, type of social events and so on.Worldwide, we have 857 hotels, currently, and we have put countermeasures into place, splitting it into four sections: preparation, threat, emergency

•    controlled at a hotel level, and crisis. For this last,we then have help from other outside companies such as FEI Behavioral Health (www.feinet.com) and Send Word now (www.sendwordnow.com).

Edward McLaughlin, vice president FEI, who’s responsible for the company’s crisis management side of the business, says: “We work with all sorts of organisations from airlines to government agencies as well as amusement parks and two significant hotel chains – Starwood and Marrriot. In the event of a fire, building collapse, hurricane or a major incident we provide a range of services, operating call centres staffed by mental health counselors who provide information and take information as well.”

It’s an aspect most business travellers don’t think too much about, but, of course, it’s our friends and relatives back at home who are desperate for information.

“They may not know the exact location or property,” says McLaughlin,“So we work with the hotels to get their room lists. If there is a loss of life or if someone is in a hospital, then relatives want to go to the hospital and we arrange transportation, escorts and support staff in the form of mental health counselors.

Branded for terrorism

Interestingly,while the experts and professionals employed by the hotel chains maintain that it is their companies which are the safest to stay with, not least because they often exceed the safety regulations of the home country, they do not agree that there is a downside to staying with a brand.

Lannoy of Starwood,which has brands as diverse as Sheraton,W Hotels and Le Meridien, says: “I don’t think there is a correlation between a brand and terrorism.  For instance in Casablanca, it was the Farah Hotel, which was bombed,which isn’t a brand at all. It’s the region and the country and the political situation which has had more bearing on it.”

And though there is no competition between the hotel companies when it comes to safety, there is a kind of subliminal marketing, if only in terms of reassurance.

“In the past we did everything we could to hide security measures people,” says Lannoy “…but now we show the guest the cameras and the people.

“It seems there is a relation between guest satisfaction and security – a customer is giving more importance to a hotel with good security than a flat-screen TV.”

SAFETY TIPS

• Look on the back of the doors for the fire plan. Read the available information posted in the room, and understand the layout of the corridor and where the fire fighting equipment is.
• Go out into the corridor and see how far it is to the stairwell. Count the number of doors you pass on the way to the stairwell. If there’s a powercut, you might need this to find your way out.
• Use those staircases if possible, though check you can get back in once you are out on the staircase. Hotels try and balance the need for guests to use the stairwells with security in stopping an intruder having access to the guest floors.  If in doubt, ask the staff
• If you are concerned about the hotel you are staying in, practise your escape route and keep going until you reach fresh air – the door at the bottom of the stairs might be alarmed, but if it is locked or blocked, it is better to find out before an emergency.
• If an alarm goes off and you find the corridor outside your room full of smoke, go back to your room. Smoke is highly toxic and you will be better off shutting the door and phoning down to reception.
• Do not get into the lift. In any event, in an emergency modern lifts are programmed to take you to the ground floor and stay there.