Hotel owners and operators have a double responsibility: They need to keep their staff safe, but need to look after their customers, too.
And the reasons things can go wrong are manifold. There are natural disasters, from hurricanes to earthquakes and fires; there is physical and verbal harassment, and there are your common-and-garden issues like slips and falls.
“Guests … entrust their safety and security into the company they choose to lodge with,” said Ethan Reily, director of insurance, risk management and compliance, HM Alpha Hotels and Resorts, Nashville. “So, it’s critical to make sure associates have a wealth of knowledge and that everyone has certain responsibilities, whether it’s communicating with guests or assisting with a safety concern. It comes down to training and having the policies to support that, [which] really comforts the guests.”
Staff Safety
Gulph Creek Hotels, which has more than 20 properties on the East Coast, uses the AlwaysOn staff safety platform from Roar For Good (Wayne, Pa.) to keep employees safe. This entails panic buttons that staff can wear or have nearby—such as under a counter—which they press if a situation arises.
Wearables like this are key for housekeeping staff and front desk workers at night. “It’s typically for anyone who works alone, but we encourage everyone to have their own device,” said Valerie Anderson, growth marketing manager for Roar. “Typically we see higher incidents of violence at night when there are fewer staff. There have been quite a few incidents of domestic violence and people who aren’t authorized coming into a hotel.”
At the Westin Bonaventure Hotel & Suites in downtown Los Angeles, 5,000 people enter and exit daily. One housekeeper there credits Roar’s panic button with saving her life.
The buttons can also help staff feel better and safer in their roles and less likely to leave their jobs for another one. And for the hotel, the employer, it costs a lot less to have a preventive measure in place, Anderson said, than to face the costs if a negative situation got out of hand, not to mention the negative effects that would have on a hotel’s reputation.
Workplace violence is an issue HM Alpha takeLivs seriously. “Front desk staff, housekeepers, maintenance workers and others face physical or verbal abuse from guests or intruders. Housekeeping especially are vulnerable when working in rooms alone,” said Reily. Panic buttons, he said, “help employees feel safe at work. Investing in our associates makes them want to invest their time back into the company.”
Natural Disasters
In July, Remington Hospitality partnered with Smart Hotel Manager, Dover, Del., to be ready for natural disasters. The partnership began with seven properties deploying the Live Safety platform (all 115 properties will be onboard within the first six months), which simplifies emergency response, streamlines compliance training and improves staff readiness for anything from a tornado to a fire. The main goal was to mitigate water damage from these events.
Natural disasters have been more prevalent in the past three to four years, said Rob Carl, senior vice president, facilities and capital planning with Remington Hospitality, Dallas. And now that the group is growing its properties outside the U.S., in locations like the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica and Belize, it wants to stay on top of situations even more.
The goal of the app is compliance, preparation and readiness for 20 types of emergencies—from a water leak to elevator entrapment, active shooters and extreme weather. The guides also provide information on what to do after an emergency.
It helps Remington prevent water damage from natural disasters as much as possible, to plan for problems they can’t prepare for and to train staff. The company has developed a basic procedure, and then adapts it to each property based on things like whether it has a backup generator or the mechanical systems it has in place. “We prepared a blueprint, then customized it. We continue modifying it and it’s easy with the electronic format,” Carl said.
The training component is really important, he said, and is made much easier with the app. “It’s a lot more efficient and it’s less costly, versus manual procedures and having multiple binders for emergencies.”
Managers send reminders to staff to complete ongoing training and they can see when staff members have completed it, all through the app. The training can also be gamified to help with employee compliance.
To get started with the app, Remington Hospitality took photos around its participating properties, a one-time task that takes less than an hour. Once that’s done, said Vanessa Osbourne, founder and CEO of Smart Hotel Manager, if there’s an emergency, it’s easy to pinpoint exactly where it’s happening.
“The big area everyone is excited about is water loss, water leaks and fire safety. We included information on fire extinguishers, people trapped by fire and AED defibrillators,” said Osbourne.
“We need to prepare for the future in a smart way and help people feel comfortable with what’s going to help profits in the long run,” she adds.
Carl said he sleeps much better at night knowing there’s a process and system in place and knowing properties don’t have to start from scratch when something occurs.
For emergencies, HM Alpha uses technology to monitor for natural disasters and ensures it trains its staff for all eventualities. To reduce reliance on a single person, responsibilities are typically designated to an entire department. “So your front desk might have the responsibility of ensuring guests are evacuating a building; a security team may be responsible for checking the floors.”
To know how much focus to put onto different areas of emergency training, Reily suggests looking at which are the most likely events to occur and training on those first and most frequently, while not ignoring the less-likely occurrences.
McKibbon Hospitality, Tampa, Fla. ups the ante on its emergency training every spring since it has a lot of properties in Florida and on the Southeast coast. This training kicks into high gear in April “so teams have everything in place before the season starts,” said President Bruce Baerwalde.
“You don’t have but a 48-hour notice if something’s on the way. So it’s about readiness and staff training. Buildings are built to be water-resistant but there are plenty of ways the water makes its ways in, especially through vents. So when you get driving rain, you could get water into those areas and water is your worst enemy, especially for buildings made of wood.”
It's also vital to review procedures every year because they can change regularly, especially when it comes to evacuation. “Municipalities are very quick to do evacuation orders,” Baerwalde points out. So McKibbon ensures it has processes in place, communications that can go out to guests and arriving guests to keep them apprised of any situation as it evolves.
The training is comprehensive and covers necessary supplies, vendors the hotel may work with, evacuation steps and how to secure the building. But just as important as the preparation is a post-emergency debriefing, Baerwalde said. “We review everything and make sure there’s nothing we need to add, modify or evolve.”
Surveillance and Recording
McKibbon Hotels has seen a big uptick in parking lot burglaries and they’re often conducted by sophisticated groups of thieves.
If a hotel’s parking lot is prone to car break-ins, McKibbon employs outside security to patrol the lot all night. But even then, Baerwalde said, the groups of criminals will watch the security people, find opportunities and notify the group when they can quickly enter the parking lot and break into a car.
To keep on top of criminal activity like this, McKibbon participates in the American Hotel and Lodging Association’s safety and security committee, which meets virtually and in-person every year. “So we’re learning from others and sharing best practices,” said Baerwalde. “As an industry, we want our hotels to be safe and secure for our guests. The worst thing that could happen is something a hotel can’t recover from.”
McKibbon puts cameras in its hotels and parking lots, with medium success, but where they do help, said Baerwalde, “is being able to learn from an incident rather than relying on the recollection of an associate or guest.”
McKibbon also ensures everything is recorded, no matter how small, “whether we’re concerned it will turn to something legal or not,” he said. “If nothing was taken from a car but a window was broken, it’s still reported. We can track all incidents and our ownership gets to see that, as well as our insurance carriers.”
It's a good idea to share everything with your insurance carriers, said Baerwalde, because they are very involved in proactive measures to prevent criminal activity. McKibbon’s insurer visits several of the group’s hotels every year where it completes a thorough audit to share any weaknesses. “There have been some learnings because they might see things we don’t see,” he said, and this could lead to more preventive measures being put in place.
McKibbon also has a safety committee at each hotel, which meets once a quarter and shares things that have happened. The company has a safety topic of the month, too, and it's talked about all month “to keep our associates aware.”
Keeping safety and security top of mind with all employees means everyone can sleep well at night.
This article was originally published in the January edition of Hotel Management magazine. Subscribe here.