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Petra Risk Solutions’ Director of Risk Management, Todd Seiders , offers a P3 Hospitality Risk Report – ‘Knox Boxes’.Â
P3 ( Petra Plus Process) is the Risk Management Division of Petra Risk Solutions – America ’s largest independent insurance brokerage devoted exclusively to the hospitality marketplace.
 For more information on Petra and P3 visit petrarisksolutions.com or call 800.466.8951.
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Filed under Crime, Guest Issues, Injuries, Insurance, Liability, Management And Ownership, Risk Management
The busy Miami Music Week festival claimed at least one life this weekend when a man drowned during a pool party at the Clevelander hotel. The 40-year-old man from out of town was swimming in the hotel’s pool after drinking heavily and drowned. The hotel was hosting the Nervous Pool Party at the time.
CBSMiami reports that the drowning occurred late Sunday afternoon. The man slipped below the surface, and despite efforts by onlookers to save him and perform CPR, he died.
The station also reports that the man and his friends were believed to be drinking heavily before going in the pool.
The Nervous Pool Party 2 was headlined by superstar DJs like Oscar G, Ralph Falcon, and Junior Sanchez.
For more:Â http://blogs.miaminewtimes.com/riptide/2011/03/man_drowns_during_pool_party_a.php#
Filed under Guest Issues, Injuries, Liability, Management And Ownership, Pool And Spa, Training
Federal law requires hotels to give people with mobility issues access to their properties, including allowing them to use devices other than wheelchairs as long as they do not raise legitimate safety concerns. The type, size and speed of the device, along with the amount of pedestrian traffic all factor into the decision.
One major change deals with the information available to people making room reservations. The idea is that people with disabilities should be able to book hotel rooms with the same efficiency, immediacy and convenience as those who do not need accessible guest rooms. The provision applies whether people are making reservations by phone, in person, on a website or though a third-party provider such as a travel agent or OTA.
Hotels must identify and describe the hotel’s accessible features in enough detail so potential guests can determine if the hotel can meet their needs, McCullough said.
Hotels also have an obligation to hold accessible guest rooms for people with disabilities unless all other guestrooms of that type have been rented. For example, McCullough said, if a hotel has 25 double-bed rooms and two are designated accessible, the reservation service must rent all 23 of non-accessible before it rents the two to people without disabilities. The rule does not apply to unique rooms such as a penthouse or bridal suite.
The difficulty is making sure that the reservation system accommodates this requirement, since the rule applies to reservations made through all channels.
“That will be a technical hurdle for your companies to leap over within the 11 months,†McCullough said. “I hope you are working on this particular issue.â€
Another change requires that hotels honor a specific guest room request from customers with disabilities, even if it’s a policy of a hotel to not hold specific rooms.
For more:Â http://www.hotelinteractive.com/article.aspx?articleid=20172
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Filed under Guest Issues, Health, Injuries, Insurance, Legislation, Management And Ownership, Risk Management, Training
Effective security and risk management relies on a foundation of principles including critical rapid data flow, standardization of emergency protocols, executive leadership and effective local management, not luck. We can guarantee only that attacks against hotels will happen again. The nature of the hospitality industry offers porous, soft, attractive targets.
The corporate security departments of most major hotel brands are not budgeted to provide the effective layers of detection or deterrence required to minimize this risk. A cautious examination of the major world economies reveals the first early signs of improvement. This presents an opportunity for major brands to offer an enhanced measure of security to their important customer base. We should consider that the safety of business and recreational travel is on the minds of everyone who boards a plane and visits or stays as a guest in your facilities. Comfortably resolving this sense of uneasiness is good business.
There are several critical elements required to create an effective hotel global security program:
•   security risk management software (global command and control);
•   security management standardization by venue;
•   new generation security equipment with software analytics; and
•   training.
Management methods that increase margins and reduce the risk of crime, terror, accidents and incidents, can be summarized by four words: global command and control.
For more:Â http://www.hotelnewsnow.com/Articles.aspx/5239/Guest-safety-in-an-unsafe-world
Filed under Crime, Guest Issues, Injuries, Insurance, Liability, Management And Ownership, Privacy, Risk Management, Technology
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Filed under Health, Injuries, Labor Issues, Liability, Management And Ownership, Risk Management, Training
Disney hotel union members submitted Tuesday a petition with about 1,400 signatures to managers, seeking changes to their employee cards that they say would protect them against identity theft.
Unite Here Local 11, the union that represents about 2,100 hotel workers, is fighting to change identification cards that have encoded Social Security numbers, which can be read by smartphone apps and other devices.
Already last month, the union filed a federal class action lawsuit, claiming that the cards violate state law. Union members collected signatures to emphasize that the majority of hotel workers want an immediate change to their ID cards, rather than a few listed on the lawsuit. Leigh Shelton, a union spokeswoman, said some other unions also are supporting the cause, but they did not participate in this petition.
About 20 workers took their petition to the Disney administration building in Anaheim on Tuesday morning.
“This is a very serious problem that we hope they resolve immediately,” said Eddie Chavez, a union organizer and Disneyland Hotel bellman.
For more:Â http://www.ocregister.com/news/-293152–.html
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Filed under Labor Issues, Liability, Management And Ownership, Technology, Theft
The Virginia Court of Appeals found that a cook’s right shoulder injury was not related to a preexisting condition so it awarded him benefits.
A cook for a hotel slipped on a wet floor in the restroom at his workplace and fell, hitting his right shoulder against a sink.The court said the cook had different diagnoses and treatments before and after the fall. The court noted that the cook was undergoing treatment for tendonitis before the fall and was diagnosed with a right shoulder strain, contusion, and sprain after the fall. The cook received injections both before and after the fall, but they consisted of different drugs. Additionally, the surgical recommendations before and after the fall differed.
The hotel also argued that the cook failed to disclose his prior shoulder injury to two doctors, so their opinions should not have been relied on. The court disagreed. One doctor noted that the cook’s past medical history was “noncontributory,” and the second noted that it was “negative.” The court said these terms did not necessarily establish that the cook did not inform the doctors of his previous shoulder problems. Rather, the terms could have been interpreted to indicate a lack of foundation for alternative causation.
For more:Â http://www.riskandinsurance.com/story.jsp?storyId=533334406
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Filed under Claims, Health, Injuries, Insurance, Labor Issues, Liability, Management And Ownership
The Auburn Villager has confirmed that Mary Beth Goodner, an Auburn University student and long-time Auburn resident, has died in an accident in Key West, Fla., during AU’s spring break. Allyson Crean, public information officer for the Key West Police Department, said the investigation is still open and the police report is not yet available.
Authorities say a man is in serious condition after falling five floors from an Orlando hotel. Orange County Fire Rescue responded to the Friday incident at the Hilton Orlando near International Drive and State Road 528.
For more:Â http://www.auburnvillager.com/story.html?1300391487005367
Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/03/18/2121728/man-falls-5-floors-from-orlando.html##ixzz1Gy5Lt3XL
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Filed under Guest Issues, Health, Injuries, Liability, Management And Ownership, Risk Management
Cyber criminals are systematically attacking systems that store credit card data, including Point-of-Sale and Property Management Systems. The criminal organizations are highly structured and integrated with the world’s organized crime rings. 
Detailed forensic analysis by law enforcement agencies and specialized private-sector security practices, as well as by security departments at major hotel groups around the world, leave little doubt that the attacks on hotels are highly targeted and effective.
Many hoteliers believe they are not vulnerable because they use Point-of-Sale and Property Management Systems that have been validated as conforming to the latest PCI security standards. Unfortunately this is far from the case. Even such validated systems can be vulnerable if the hotel operates them in an unsecured manner. Leading forensics firms agree that the most important security measures are those that keep cyber criminals from getting inside the hotel network in the first place. Once inside, there are many ways for them to steal the data, even if the PMS or POS system itself is secure.
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Filed under Crime, Guest Issues, Liability, Management And Ownership, Risk Management, Technology, Theft
 
Three major hotel industry associations, including the American Hotel & Lodging Association (AH&LA), Hotel Technology Next Generation (HTNG), and Hospitality Financial and Technology Professionals (HFTP) today issued the following joint statement to hotels regarding organized cyber crime attacks on credit card data. It identifies actions that hotels — and not their system vendors — need to take immediately in order to minimize their vulnerabilities and to avoid the potential for hundreds of thousands of dollars in costs and fines that typically result when just a single hotel system is breached.
The three actions are:
For more:Â http://www.hospitalitynet.org/news/154000320/4050609.html
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Filed under Crime, Guest Issues, Liability, Management And Ownership, Risk Management, Technology, Training
