Hotel security: all-risk insurance

Security is a sensitive subject for hotel directors. Welcoming living areas that open onto the outside world, their properties constitute prime prey for dishonest people. What comes to mind first of all are upscale hotels where the well-to-do stay with valuable personal belongings. But economy hotels are not exempt from the problem since businessmen traveling with their portable computers tend to favor these accommodations with their good value for price ratio. In terms of security, hoteliers walk the high wire. It is difficult to transform a property into a secured bunker at the risk of looking inhospitable and dissuading outside clientele from using the hotel’s services, but it is also impossible to ignore a daily reality that could seriously affect hotel operations.Until recently, locks with magnetic cards were the ultimate, but already contact-free RFID technology is appearing, eliminating the need to insert the card in the lock (see following article). “We only do maintenance and renewal of magne-tic technology now. No new projects,” remarks Joël Le Tessier, director of Bricard’s electronic department. And even newer technology is ta-king shape: Near Field Communication (NFC) authorizing the room’s opening thanks to an electronic chip in the mobile telephone. Several suppliers are counting on its development. Equally strategic for in-room security, safes are evolving in favor of efficiency, while focusing on more modern design and technologies.If something happens, the consequences are financial: the Paris convention, signed by many countries (Germany, Italy, United Kingodom, Belgium, Cypress, countries of the ex-Yugoslavia) and dating from December 17, 1962, makes it clear: the hotelier is presumed responsible of the theft if it occurs under his surveillance. While compensation might be limited, it is nonetheless dissuasive: 50 times the room’s rack rate for a theft from the client’s car parked in the hotel’s private parking lot; 100 times...