Introduction
Natural disasters (e.g. forest fire, hurricane, tsunami) and persistent terrorism attacks remind companies, guests, and staffs of the hospitality industry to be ready for all forms of emergency. Security is not confined to only one element. Rather, it has been categorised into different kinds ranging from property damage prevention to potential injury and death within the hotel vicinity. To enhance security, numerous hotels have used closed circuit televisions, smoke detectors, fire sprinklers, and electronic locks. Hence, there are three types of security, namely, security of systems, security of persons, and physical aspects (Kusluvan et al., 2010). This paper discusses and analyses the security systems used in hotels to ensure the safety and security of guests and staffs.
Greater security became a crucial concern for the hospitality industry and its guests and staffs after the 9/11 incident and consequent terrorist activities across the globe. Studies show that security was a leading concern for hotel guests. Security is defined as the absence of uncertainty, risk, or danger. Hospitality companies have enhanced their security systems by making use of employee training, closed-circuit television devices, electronic security mechanisms, smart cards, recruitment of more security staffs, crisis management programmes and emergency alertness and preparedness (Norman, 2014). Security is a major issue for large hotels like Ritz-Carlton that accommodate CEOs, political personalities, and other VIPs, all of whom are highly at-risk of terrorist assaults. The attempts of airlines at enhancing their security systems after 9/11 are widely documented and involve bulletproof cockpit doors, database screening, metal detectors, and luggage x-rays (Camillo, 2015). These security procedures have resulted in prolonged but necessary and unavoidable downtimes for passengers.
Ensuring the safety of staffs, properties, and guests from unlawful actions involves security research and checkups on current technologies and layouts. These involve property safety, key control, locking mechanisms, protection of guestrooom doors, guarding and supervision of parking areas, lighting of the outside and public parts of the building, and access to buildings. In its latest document on tourist security and safety for travel destinations, the World Tourism Organisation explains that a fundamental tenet of safety at hospitality companies is that the guests are mainly responsible for their own safety (Camillo, 2015). A hotel has the responsibility to create the circumstances for the guests to carry out their own obligation to the absolute and to provide overall security and safety.
Tourism is seen as a system, which is composed of available transportation sectors, attractions, and accommodations. Instead of addressing or focusing on the different sectors of tourism, the systems management model sees the tourist destination as an integrated, calculated structure consisting of interconnected units. This model provides management a way of viewing the tourist destination in its entirety and as a part of the bigger, outside environment (Clifton, 2012). The hospitality industry which offers lodgings or accommodations in tourist destinations, comprises one of the important sectors for flourishing tourist destinations. The systems model shows that the functioning of any sector of an industry influences, in different levels, the functioning of all other sectors. Still, even though the hospitality and travel industry was adversely affected by the 9/11 terrorist attacks, passengers, tourists, and guests are ever more trusting airlines and hotels, made possible by greater security systems within the industry.
Security Systems
Security experts who view comprehensive physical security with a risk-based, external-internal systems should pay more attention to the particular strategies used by terrorists nowadays. These strategies involve suicide bombings and other violent methods, including covert, armed groups sneaking into hotels to seize hostages and wreak havoc. Conventional security systems can be combined with security technologies and convergent information technology (IT) applications to greatly improve the current security system (Pizam, 2012) since equal value and attention is paid to the development of security designs.
A major security difficulty for big hotels are the numerous exits, floors, and corridors where unlawful, unauthorised individuals can enter, hide, and flee. Although conventional CCTVs can give an audiovisual record of incidents, the DVRs capturing these events are not much of a value in the real-time detection and monitoring of attackers or invaders as they maneuver from one area or segment to another (Barrows & Powers, 2008). Through the use of current CCTV devices and IT technologies, a usual event or image recording security system can be revolutionised into a real-time security system. CCTVs are combined for a smooth, uninterrupted real-time detection and monitoring of events. Radio-frequency identification (RFID) technologies are incorporated into the system (AlBattat & Som, 2013) to build a detect-monitor-track mechanism in the hotel that enables security officials in secured control centres and facilities to track invaders or criminals.
The Special Weapons Attack Team (SWAT) and other counterterrorism units acting in response to a dangerous incident can have these recordings streamed, in real time, to compact, lightweight gadgets so that they are informed or updated of the current location and destination of invaders (Norman, 2014). As a daily technology for hotel security experts, this device can be installed to enhance safety mechanisms and the security of guests and staffs. In both cases, creating and installing a coordinated detect-monitor-track system can substantially decrease insurance premiums for hotels since it can give real-time warnings for intruders, detect and track the criminals within the vicinity (Camillo, 2015), and offer real-time alarm for attacks on hotel guests.
Besides Electronic Locking Systems-- a locking apparatus which is run by electricity and usually linked to an access control mechanism-- there are several other security systems that have been used by organisations within the hospitality industry (Pizam, 2012). Major security devices have been the motion detector and a technology for monitoring the presence and movement of an individual in a secured location. Infrared devices could detect the presence of an individual by detecting body heat. Likewise, microwaves could be installed in a secured location that will tip off by switching on lights, giving a loud signal, or quiet warning to a distant location or control centre once the wave is breached. A seismic device could also activate when a moving entity touches a hidden seismic detector signalling an unwelcome or threatening presence in a secured area (Pizam, 2012; Clifton, 2012). This has been effective in detecting prowlers or trespassers in the surrounding vicinity of a guest room area. Normally this technology will give off a signal remotely, but it could also give off a loud sound or floodlight as an alarm.
Another example of security measure used in the hospitality industry is the standard perimeter security. This security device is generally regarded the peripheral, outlying part of comprehensive security, which ensures deterrence by means of a security format that involves lighting, detectors at entrances and exits, cameras, barriers, and fences (Morritt & Weinstein, 2012). The preventative component of this security system is predicated on the discouragement of the minor (e.g. petty offenders) and deterring the major (e.g. terrorist attackers, organised crimes). Employing a threat-based model, and considering the terrorist methods used nowadays, two further requirements for perimeter security instantly become crucial-- immediate evaluation of the threat and real-time identification and monitoring.
In 1996, a major progress in access control system was attained. This offers a solution to prohibited or unlawful access from non-lobby entrances and the actions and movement of unwelcome individuals through 'employee only' entrances, emergency doors, or stairways. It provides defence against unlawful entry and strongly regulates unwarranted exit (Pizam, 2012). Electromagnetic force supports a door against a certain level of pressure, but during an emergency the signal or alam will instantly discharge the electromagnet to allow quick exit. Security systems in hospitality also use elevator access mechanisms and cameras (CCTVs) (Pizam, 2012; Clifton, 2012). An additional component equips a distress signal and victim alarm for switching on by an individual with disability at every stairway entrance. An entrance that has been breached sounds off a 20-second notice (Pizam, 2012, p. 599): “Hotel security is on the way. Legal prosecution will be made.”
CCTVs have numerous purposes in a given location. Because of privacy issues it should be implemented properly. Attention and care must also be exercised with regard to response capacity if an emergency or accident is identified by CCTV. Numerous security systems will simply record, and are not able to provide round-the-clock monitoring (Clifton, 2012). Institutions are capable of providing this form of monitoring from remote centres thru electronic mechanisms such as satellites (Kusluvan et al., 2012). This boosts the performance and effectiveness of CCTV.
Other means to secure or ensure the safety of an area within hotels require the application of some kind of device or hardware, like locks or cameras. Somehow, technology or hardware provides an improved and more cost-effective alternative for a blanket of security. Fences, doors, and locks are largely foolproof and cannot be disrupted or damaged (Morritt & Weinstein, 2012). Moreover, they do not create any singularity or subjective capability, which makes human beings the more desirable option in several situations. Nevertheless, human labour is costlier and more demanding (e.g. insurance benefits, paid vacations, etc). Security systems, regular policing, and fixed posts are most frequently brought together to create the safest environment (Camillo, 2015). It is the obligation of the security manager to look for the most effective combination and implementation to decrease the threat in all areas.
The training, education, and experience of the security manager are crucial at this point, but there are several fundamental ways that anyone can adopt in ensuring the safety of hotels in the most effective and less costly means possible. Start with the most affordable and simplest security measure available. Afterward, install additional components until the threat has been alleviated. As each risk is assessed, make a decision which security tactic will most successfully and affordably avoid it (Barrows & Powers, 2008). That could involve a coordination of tactics or diverse components like an alarm and a lock, or a camera and sharp shrubs. This demands knowledge and experience with those tactics and components and the knowledge of what is effective and what is not. Taking the ordinary hotel room as a case in point, the first security component is the door lock. However, once security experts have realised that keys could be duplicated, stolen, or misplaced, another component was developed. Most of these problems, according to Clifton (2012), were mitigated once the magnetic key lock was introduced.
Supplementary door locks and dead bolts were incorporated so the safety of the guests would be ensured from technologically advanced intruders. However, there are still threats of stalking, door pushing, and other criminal activities, hence it may be essential to install cameras in elevators or corridors (Norman, 2014). The last component to integrate is physical security. Integrating components to physical security is attained through raising the frequency exhaustively. However, simply adopting the security measures discussed, even with a highly skilled security personnel, is not enough. In contrast, the installation of a system of complex, 24/7 outdoor cameras, connected to sweeping advanced cameras, bolstered with a video enhanced technology is an integration of convergent IT with physical security systems that, through a mechanism of scale, builds up the perimeter (Pizam, 2012). The surveillance cameras on perimeters track and transmit a warning in actual time of the impending threat. This provides security officers the time required to evaluate and respond to prevent or counteract the threat before it becomes a serious problem for the hotel. In coastal hotels, an electronic security system can provide long-range images, making use of round-the-clock pan-tilt-zoom camera and ground-based radar (Clifton, 2012) to detect and track approaching intruders.
Considerable impasse distance can be attained through such technologies by making use of the perimeter's external area, not only between the facility and the perimeter itself. With surveillance technologies (e.g. sensor and video applications), an uncommunicative perimeter can be revolutionised from a physical security system to an interactive mechanism with breadth and magnitude that can in fact enable actual deterrent against fatal intruders (Camillo, 2015). In such technology, CCTVs are modified from being a preventative or surveillance device into a real-time incursion detection and evaluation device giving timely signals that provides security the chance to respond, secure important assets and properties, and rescue staffs and guests.
A leader in the design and use of virtual reality systems, the Digital Tech Frontier, has developed a fascinating reality networks for major hotels (Morritt & Weinstein, 2012). The organisation has developed virtual vacations that offer guests a complete spherical image and a perceptive exploration giving guests the opportunity to explore this virtual environment. Virtual reality (VR) guests enjoy this technology due to reduced risks and affordability. However, even though VR technologies offer unique advantages to the hospitality and travel industry, they also create definite disadvantages (Morritt & Weinstein, 2012). Still, this piece of technology has been developed and used to ensure the security of hotel guests.
Except if a hotel is located in a highly at-risk area where terrorist attacks are a near possibility, safety and security may not constantly be apparent. CCTVs can be found in open, public spaces, while fire extinguishers, sprinkler devices, fire detectors and possibly a security personnel in the lobby can all seem comforting. Some guests from different cultural backgrounds appreciate such security efforts. Likewise, others guests would want security and safety measures to be 'unseen' or hidden-- yet are there (Norman, 2014). Acquiring solid information on security and safety from hotel industry or scholarly sources is challenging. The prevalence of criminal activities in hotels may be accessible through crime mapping devices (Camillo, 2015). Accidents and fires in hotels across the globe are often obtainable in open media sources.
Several studies have found out that the following are the main security and safety concerns of hotel guests (Kusluvan et al., 2010; Camillo, 2015; Norman, 2014): a strong network of command and control and crisis management available 24/7; registration processes for staffs requiring access or a key as one of their usual responsibilities; security and safety training for hotel personnel; pressurised staircases; round-the clock first-aid staffs; multi-language public warning mechanism for emergency situations; CCTVs for public areas in the hotel; routine checkup of hotel security and safety mechanisms; round-the-clock uniformed security personnel; emergency lighting mechanism; emergency preparedness, such as for fire evacuation; and, well-established and effective fire prevention measures.
References
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