SECURING LIVES & PROPERTIES IN HOTEL

Not too many people are familiar with the fact that it is statutory for all public buildings and commercial properties to have both entry and exit gates. The reasons for this are not just to facilitate free flow of traffic but more importantly, to ensure safety procedures for both lives and property. It is baffling to see building purposely built as an hotel with just one entrance/ exit for guests and staff. I guess this is a fall out from our porous mindset on general security. It is generally not out of place to see us entrusting properties valued at millions of naira in the hands of lean, hungry looking fellows from that part of the country.

I was consulted to do a process management for a 50 room hotel last year in the south western part of the country. To access the hotel, a gate man not a security officer (I guess you can discern the difference) waved me to a stop as to allow outgoing traffic from the hotel to pass. I was not given a security pass/ticket and no search was conducted on my car. After parking, I searched for liability notice but there was none. I similarly observed that human traffic was incessant as staff, suppliers, contractors and guests make their way in and out of the hotel from same entrance. There were no CCTV cameras on the perimeter fence. There was no record of how many cars were in the hotel at any particular time.

On check in, I deliberately did not completely fill out the registration card expecting the gum chewing receptionist to raise eyebrows but it is either she did not know any better or she could not see beyond her false eyelashes. She did not request for any form of identification either and none was given. Upon payment, I was given my room key without a keycard! She was the same person that took me to my room (for security reasons female staffs are not encouraged to be on the floors) and the door looked so feeble.

The lesson for us in this boring preamble is that we hardly ever pay attention to security. In hotel, security starts from the gate as whoever walks or drives in automatically becomes our responsibility. As in most hotels, it is wrong to have one security official at the gate at any time. The ideal situation is to have a security official attending to incoming traffic and the other handling outgoing traffic while surveillance is a responsibility shared between the two. Beyond this, there must be a way of keeping a tab on the vehicular traffic and at the same time maintain a preventive security at the car park if there is one. This of course is elementary and security in hotel is more expansive. For the record, guests’ major concern and point of attraction to hotel is security.

Most hotel management now outsources practically every aspect of hotel operations out; I do not beef this, as outsourcing will be fully treated in future article. Outsourcing security however must be done with deep sense of responsibility as security operatives must have courteous mindset and be trained to meet and exceed the hotel service delivery standard if there is one. Security at the check in desk is vital and that is the essence of key-card as a form of identification for the guests among other key factors the card represents. Legally, the government, yes government constitutionally mandates the hotel to file in security reports every day. Sadly, this is one aspect that management treats with levity as receptionists hardly collect and collate guests’ data and identification. They have not been trained to understand the need for this critical duty. Guest data base has more purposes than what it is being used for. So, when state security service comes they expect to meet a database if there is one.

As a dessert, if you do not have a CCTV protected premises, do not have security doors, do not have electronic card keys and no peep holes in your room doors. It is a matter of time when you will come to the hotel to check your occupancy and you will find not one but none.

Adegbamigbe Patrick

Hospitality Consultant

234 80 57736980