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Could Your Hotel Security Be Better? |
Three reasons hotel security is often not what it should be
1. How do you 'serve' guest protection and security?
Often guest protection is not as good as it could be because hoteliers don't have a method for focusing on it. Even if a hotel wants to put more emphasis on security, management may be at a loss as to how to do it. This is partly a problem central to the nature of the security function, and partly a problem of simply finding a way to make security a central concern of daily hotel management.
Most things are seen through the lense of always striving to offer higher quality services and ensure the total satisfaction of the visit-experience. This mindset doesn't easily transfer over to security since guest protection is not easy to view as a service the hotelier can shape, enhance, and differentiate while serving the guest. It is easy to focus on rooms, facilities, and food & beverage, because that is what people usually visit a hotel for. It is normal to focus on smiles, and attentiveness, and remembering guest names because that directly enhances the hotel's reputation and raises the level of satisfaction. With security, the feedback loop is much more invisible.
But how does one turn security into a differentiating factor? How does a hotel get guests to realize just how good the security is without something having to go wrong first? If guest protection was something guests automatically realized and rewarded hotels for hoteliers would focus on it exactly as they do other areas. The fact that for most guests it isn't on the radar unless there is a problem, means hotels often only get to see security operate as a damage controller. In fact, the more efficient guest protection is in its other role, that of risk mitigator, the more invisible it is and the less likely it is to be noticed as a success story.
2. Hotel security and guest protection services are someone else's job. Those security guys are not part of the real hotel team.
Successful hoteliers are excellent at creating the incentives and systems that promote the right kind of behavior from the hotel staff. The right kind of behavior then leads to the desired results of higher guest satisfaction and higher returns. Management systems of delivering great service are well developed and well understood. It is almost a science. But where does that leave the security staff? How are they supposed to be evaluated and rewarded? How are they supposed to be integrated into the larger team? Even though guest protection is a support service that surrounds and touches all other services, it is difficult for anyone to articulate how their own service areas are 'aided' by it. Other service area managers don't usually directly rely on security for their own service quality or financial results.
3. Therefore, hotel security is held to a lower standard.
Just as security is often not noticed unless something goes wrong, it is also not evaluated and as actively managed as other hotel services. This is partly to be expected since the hotel is not perceived to be in the business of providing security. Guest protection is just a subsidiary support service surrounding all other services. Security managers, by nature, are unlikely to stand up and demand a greater level of recognition and attention from upper management. But they should. It is the job of the security manager to ensure security is not ignored by management in the constant search for service and process improvements.
The tendency of security and guest protection to be ignored as a fundamental competitive principle of hotel management means upper management needs to strive to explicitly focus on understanding it and managing it. Security managers need to be cognizant of this tendency and ensure they are proactive in seeking equal mindshare within the organization. Security managers who are comfortable in their anonymity are unlikely to be involved in daily communication with other unit managers and upper management, which means they will lose touch with the rest of the hotel and the hotel mindset. The unengaged security function slowly drifts even further away from the rest of the team.
Just because no one has heard from security in awhile doesn't mean all is well.
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