When a guest walks through the doors of your hotel, they have certain expectations about the quality of service they’re going to experience. You could even say there are certain things they take for granted.
In the hotel business, there are few things more basic and important than safety, security, and privacy. Your guests need to feel safe and protected in your hotel. If they don’t, they may not come back, or worse, you may end up in a legal case.
Here’s what you need to know about safety, security, and privacy.
One of the keys to ensuring your guest’s safety is controlled access. This simply means paying attention to the distribution of keys or keycards and access to room inventory. Management, employees, and contractors need to be intimately familiar with the ins and outs of access so your guests are adequately protected.
If anyone asks for a replacement key, your staff should be checking IDs to ensure no one that shouldn’t have access ends up gaining it. Utilizing the latest technology for keys and locks can also help prevent unwanted problems.
In an emergency, people don’t always make the most levelheaded decisions. It’s important that your guests can immediately identify people working at your hotel in case of a crisis.
An easy way to achieve this is to give your staff uniforms and name tags. When in uniform, it makes it easy for your guests to get the help they need from qualified people they can trust. Your guests will also feel more secure knowing the property is being watched over by your staff.
Parking lots, bars, lounges, and other public areas should be monitored with closed-circuit TV cameras. This can help reduce cases of theft, vandalism, and other acts that would make your guests feel unsafe.
Training your staff is the number one key to safety, security, and privacy success. Your team should be intimately familiar with the policies and procedures they need to follow while caring for guests. Documented systems are a must when it comes to getting your staff to follow protocol.
It can be helpful to educate your guests as well, which is something you’ll want to teach your staff how to do. Letting your guests know what they can do to prevent a security or privacy issue is a value-add.
No safety and security initiative is perfect. But by keeping an eye on potential issues and holes in your plan, you can find ways to improve and adjust it. When your guests know you’re making efforts to constantly improve, they will feel more reassured staying with you.
Your safety, security, and privacy needs may change over time. It’s important to stay up-to-date on the latest best practices, and make changes to your policies when necessary.
If there’s anything we can learn from a legal case from last year, it’s that the law considers the safety, security, and privacy of hotel guests extremely important. Ignoring this could mean putting your business at risk of a similar lawsuit.
When it comes to safety, security, and privacy, many of your guests take it for granted. They assume they are staying at a safe hotel that is ready to respond to any emergencies that present themselves.
Is your hotel safe? Do your guests feel comfortable staying at your property? Is there anything you could be doing to improve their experience?