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  4. New Trends in Travel Security

New Trends in Travel Security

By Barbara Benham , Jennifer Flowers , Maria Shollenbarger , Stirling Kelso and Wing Sze Tang
July 31, 2009
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Credit: Courtesy of Taj Resorts
2008 was the year hotel security took center stage. On November 26 between 9 and 11 p.m., reported members of the Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba stormed three hotels in Mumbai—the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower Hotel, the Oberoi, and the Trident, Nariman Point—armed with machine guns, rifles, and grenades. In three days, more than 170 people were killed. This wasn’t the only attack directed at high-end hotels: in January 2008, six people were killed at the Serena Hotel in Kabul, allegedly by Taliban fighters; and in September, a car bomb at the entrance to the Marriott in Islamabad claimed 52 lives. But Mumbai’s events were deeply shocking, and not simply for their scale. A certain degree of travel-at-your-own-risk is implicit in a destination like Kabul and, to a growing extent, Pakistan. But Mumbai?And the Taj Mahal?It’s a landmark, one of the most venerated—and thus, the received wisdom would have it, secure—hotels in India.

As the world’s political and cultural terrain alters, rapidly and sometimes alarmingly, the hotel industry is being confronted with new paradigms of risk. “The kind of attack we saw in Mumbai has all the earmarks of what a terrorist wants: it’s cheap, it’s easy, and it’s sensational,” says Bruce McIndoe, president of iJET Intelligent Risk Systems, an Annapolis-based global-intelligence and risk-management consultancy that counts a handful of luxury hotel companies among its clients. McIndoe warns that we are likely to see more attempts at such attacks, at least regionally in South and Central Asia. Moreover, he says, “This incident will force the whole hotel industry to change its practices.”

The vulnerability of hotels lies in the very welcome they extend to guests through their rooms and public spaces. Steven Brill, founder of Clear, which provides passenger-prescreening technology for airports, notes that Mumbai’s events upped the ante on what had been one of the industry’s main challenges since 9/11: “Luxury hotels have two primary mandates, which exist at total cross-purposes: they want to put guests at ease, but they also need to implement safety and security measures that may make them uneasy.” Simon Cooper, president and COO of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, observes that “while it can be reassuring to see obvious signs of security precautions, it is a delicate balancing act to not make [guests] overly anxious about threat levels.”

So how exactly are the top hotels addressing safety without turning themselves into fortresses?“We don’t discuss these details, so as not to compromise them,” says Jim Fitzgibbon, president of worldwide hotel operations at Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts—a policy echoed by Cooper and other heads of major hotel companies and private hotels. But with both leisure travelers and corporate-travel bookers demanding answers in exchange for their business, safety protocols are under enormous scrutiny. And conversations with risk-assessment experts, hospitality insurers, and security firms reveal that self-auditing, and soul-searching, are at high levels throughout the industry—even at properties in major Western cities and other regions heretofore not seen as high-risk. Most hotels are focused on enhancing security in several key areas.

Airlines and AirportsAfter years of tightening security through stricter carry-on policies and random searches, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is gradually launching the most extensive passenger prescreening system to date, throughout 2009. Under the Secure Flight program, domestic travelers have to disclose personal data, including date of birth and gender, when booking flights. And in a dramatic shift, the TSA—instead of the individual airlines—will monitor this data to coordinate comparisons with the agency’s No Fly List. Providing another safety layer at terminals across the country, the government is installing high-tech video cameras that use “passive millimeter wave technology” to read illumination levels of the human body. The device captures images of a traveler’s different parts (a leg, say, or a chest). When the photos are compared, higher illumination levels in one part of the body can signal the presence of suspicious materials such as explosives.

CruisesSince last November’s pirate attack on an Oceania cruise ship in the Gulf of Aden (GOA), cruising security has been in the spotlight. Though the chance of an attack is small, cruise lines have been taking measures to ensure that it doesn’t happen again. Regent Seven Seas Cruises, for example, equipped its vessels with short-range radar, which can pick up the presence of small fishing boats (commonly used by pirates). Several companies have also removed the GOA route—which runs between Somalia and Yemen and is the only stretch of water where cruise ships have been under attack—from their itineraries. In the meantime, the United Nations recently called for armed boats to police GOA waters and provide emergency relief in case of an assault. Despite the headline-grabbing piracy, the biggest priority for cruise lines remains port safety: making sure that unauthorized travelers and baggage don’t get onto a ship. After 9/11, the International Maritime Organization instituted stricter regulations, requiring that all cargo be x-rayed and that cruises provide passengers with identification cards. So far, the efforts have proved extremely effective at keeping unauthorized people and cargo off the ships.

Trains and SubwaysDespite its lack of uniform standards, Europe is at the vanguard of rail security, having invested $21 million in safety research in 2007. Spain’s busiest rail lines, as well as Eurostar’s Brussels, London, and Paris routes, have airport-style passenger screening with X-ray machines, metal detectors, and passport control. In London, British Transport Police in rail stations and the tube have increased by 36 percent since 2003. And surveillance cameras will increase by more than 40 percent by 2012. The United States has been slower to respond on the technology front, but passenger searches are on the rise. Last fall, Amtrak boosted its police presence by deploying teams to check commuters and luggage on the nation’s busiest platforms. Undercover officers are also patrolling stations, dressed as businessmen or homeless people. As in Europe, Asian standards vary from country to country. In Bangkok, subway officials manually check bags and have replaced trash cans with clear plastic containers. Tokyo will increase the number of cameras in its subway stations to 5,700 by 2011. More-dramatic measures are taking place in Beijing, which is Asia’s first city to use X-ray machines throughout its 125-mile subway network.

No matter where you travel, there are ways you can protect yourself. Here, advice from the experts. Be informed. Read up on the social and political situation in the regions you are traveling through. Check the State Department’s website (travel.state.gov) for country-specific reports and advice, including alerts and advisories. The British Foreign & Commonwealth Office also maintains a detailed report of travel warnings, listed by country on its website (fco.gov.uk). Stay connected. Bring a cell phone or PDA that works overseas, or buy a prepaid phone on the GSM network when you arrive. And make sure the device remains adequately charged. Know who to contact. Find out the number of the local consulate at your destination (see usembassy.gov). In a crisis, you can also call the State Department’s Overseas Citizens Service (202/501-4444). Register your travel plans. Send your itinerary and contact details to the U.S. State Department, if you’re heading to a high-risk region. This way you can be reached in case of emergency. Do it online (travel.state.gov) and you’ll receive travel warnings by e-mail as well. Buy travel insurance. Consider plans that include security/repatriation services. Ask your insurance company if it provides evacuation plans, or sign up for MedjetAssist (medjet.com), a private membership company that arranges emergency jet transportation. Vet your hotel. Choose a property with good security features and access control, such as a well-staffed lobby and electronic room locks (which make it less likely that someone else will have a copy of your key). Keep a low profile. Tourists are targets because they look out of place, says Robert Siciliano, a Boston-based security consultant and author of The Safety Minute. Avoid dressing in a flashy manner and don’t wear valuables.
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Hotels: Surveillance

New Trends in Travel Security: Surveillance
Credit: iStock

The use of closed-circuit television (CCTV), for years a mainstay in hotels in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Middle East, and the Philippines, is on the rise. McIndoe predicts the spread of intelligent video surveillance to properties in regions with moderate risk levels, such as Dubai, within months. It’s also possible that the elaborate surveillance systems, including face-recognition software, now used to prevent robberies in Las Vegas hotels and casinos, could be disseminated to other American properties. Several experts, however, question the efficacy (and cost) of such systems and endorse human surveillance instead. Indeed, in recent years, there’s been a notable increase in hotels’ use of private security—a trend that will surely continue. “In some regions, it’ll be guards conspicuously uniformed, and armed, if that’s within the local law,” says John Seddon, operations manager for travel-security services at Control Risks, a London-based business-risk consultancy. “In the West, say the United Kingdom or the United States, it’ll have more of a customer-service packaging, but chances are it’ll fulfill, at least in part, the same role”—i.e., some of those smiling bellhops greeting you at the door might actually be security personnel, hired to keep an eye on entrances and visitors.

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Hotels: Staff And Training

New Trends in Travel Security: Hotel Staff And Training
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Hospitality risk consultants across the board stress the importance of thorough vetting (including background checks), rigorous training, and regular proficiency testing of even the most junior staffers. Some hotel chains began internal reviews within days of the Mumbai attacks; McIndoe’s firm dispatched agents to conduct emergency audits on more than 50 hotels around the world in December alone. “There’s huge turnover in the industry; institutional knowledge bleeds out fast,” says Jan Schnabel, global hospitality and gaming practice leader at Marsh, a global insurance broker. “Hotels need to check constantly that all employees are proficient in the execution of any emergency response.” The drills work: Devendra Bharma, executive vice president of Oberoi Hotels & Resorts, Mumbai (including both the Trident and the Oberoi), cites his 1,400-strong staff’s regular evacuation exercises as the reason that more than 450 guests from both hotels were led to safety during the November attacks.

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Hotels: Government–Hotel Cooperation

New Trends in Travel Security: Government–Hotel Cooperation
Credit: iStock

One of the major lessons of Mumbai: any hotel concerned with security should have its floor plans on file with the local fire department. Already standard in New York and other U.S. cities, this procedure is predicted to become commonplace at high-end hotels worldwide. (It’s one of the most important booking conditions in the new Traveler Safety Recommendations guide, compiled by the Association of Corporate Travel Executives.) Beyond that, more hotels in hot zones are turning to private crisis- and risk-management companies, which supply intelligence on countries and regions and facilitate communication with government or law-enforcement officials. This can be mutually beneficial: John O’Sullivan, general manager of the Four Seasons Jimbaran Bay and Sayan resorts in Bali, credits the crucial tourist economy as one of the key factors behind local authorities’ “solid commitment” to exchanging intelligence with his properties (and, he says, most of the others on the island) since the 2002 and 2005 bombings there.

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Hotels: Design

New Trends in Travel Security: Hotels Design
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These days security is often incorporated at the most preliminary design stages of a new hotel, whether it’s a 20-villa resort or a 500-room tower. Control Risks has an entire section made up of engineers, terrorism-damage experts, and security designers that tailors building templates to clients’ security needs. Industry conversation about “designing in” safety measures ranges from discussions of technology (more extensive key-card reading systems) and materials (antiballistic glass used in lobbies and elsewhere) to a hotel’s layout (driveways that circumvent guest areas entirely, deeper setbacks from streets). After the Mumbai attacks, talk of lockdown systems in lobbies and restaurants (mobile walls that would seal them off in seconds in the event of an attack) increased. McIndoe, however, is skeptical. “The last thing you’d want is a malfunctioning lockdown system trapping people inside during a fire.” One thing most experts agree on is limiting access to guest floors: “Any new hotel that’s not incorporating elevator key-card readers is missing the boat,” Schnabel says. “There’s no good reason someone on the fourth floor should have access to every other floor.”

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Hotels: Managing Perception

New Trends in Travel Security: Hotel Managing Perception
Credit: Courtesy of Taj Resorts

Though hotels are tight-lipped about their security enhancements today, McIndoe predicts it won’t be long before properties worldwide begin marketing them to travelers. He even goes so far as to posit the emergence of a “fortress hotel” brand targeted to high-risk regions. Somewhat trickier will be acclimating guests to the upgraded protocols—extra guards, or security questions at check-in—in Marrakesh or Istanbul; or, for that matter, L.A. or London. In other words, hoteliers are exploring how to frame security the way they do 400-thread-count sheets—as both a privilege of luxury and a cornerstone of customer service.

Already, properties are updating their in-room compendiums with security information. Schnabel has been working with hotels to add information on “geopolitical conditions, crime rates—a view of the local picture.” The idea is to provide a best-practice guide, so guests clearly understand both the destination’s inherent risks and the hotel’s security procedures.

The encouraging news is that the expertise, technology, and motivation to make hotels safer is there, and it’s being tapped. But nearly every source agreed that travelers need to be informed and proactive themselves. Just as hotel managers familiarize themselves with local political developments, religious holidays, crime rates, and other dynamic barometers of risk, so should you. (See “T+L’s Safety Tips”)

They also emphasize the relatively small risk associated with terrorist attacks. McIndoe estimates that a traveler has a 1 in 10 million chance of being in a terrorist attack. Meanwhile, in India, your chance of being in a fatal car accident is 1 in 22,000. “We try to help people step back and remind themselves of the bigger picture,” McIndoe says. “And would I personally stay at the Taj Mahal tomorrow?Absolutely.”

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    1 of 5 Hotels: Surveillance
    2 of 5 Hotels: Staff And Training
    3 of 5 Hotels: Government–Hotel Cooperation
    4 of 5 Hotels: Design
    5 of 5 Hotels: Managing Perception

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