Swedish Co. Conducts Hotel Safety Audit, Certification

A Swedish company has launched a worldwide hotel security accreditation program that it claims will help travel managers verify the safety of hotels and save buyers time on asking security-related questions in hotel program requests for proposals.

Safehotels has devised an audit that comprises 240 checks under the general headings of fire, medical care, VIP security and protection against theft, violence and espionage. The audits are carried out by security consultancy firm Pinkerton, whose regional vice president for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, David Reece, has been appointed non-executive chairman of the company.

Travel managers will have free access to the list of properties that are awarded the Safehotels certificate. Hotels will have to pay a fee for the audit—in the region of $10,000 to $13,000 for a 300-room hotel—according to president Mats Andersen. To earn the certificate, they will have to achieve a 90 percent rating in the fire category and 80 percent in the other categories. So far, Safehotels has audited and certified two hotels: the Gothia Towers in Gothenburg, and the Royal Pacific in Hong Kong.

The Safehotels concept was created in consultation with travel managers. Former Skanska travel manager and Swedish Business Travel Association chairman Cathrine Wickerts served as non-executive chairman during the development phase. As such, Safehotels executives said they are answering a problem of international and even national inconsistency in hotel security regulations, making it difficult for buyers to assure consistency when building a global accommodation program. "Travel managers want a hotel security standard that they can benchmark against globally," said Hans Kanold, director of business relations.

Andersen added that the Safehotels concept would reduce administrative worries for corporations as well. "The travel manager's problem is consistency: Each company has its own way of asking about security in its RFP and each hotel answers in a different way."

Douglas Bell, secretary for the Scotland and Northern Ireland Higher Education Purchasing Committee, welcomed the idea. "Security for business travelers is a key issue these days, but while airlines and airports have agreed on some common standards, other parts of the travel industry have not," he said. "The Safehotels concept seems to answer that problem. No hotel is going to admit it is unsafe, and it is very easy for them to put on a patina of security without any substance behind it. We take things very much on trust."

However, hotel experts in the United States expressed skepticism about whether Safehotels would prove a reliable guide to security. "If I were a hotel going to subscribe to this scheme, I would make sure everything was shiny on the day of inspection. Certification is only good for the day on which the assessment is carried out," said Jerry LaChapelle, chairman of the loss prevention committee of the American Hotel and Lodging Association.

Thomas Davis, president of Cleveland, Ohio-based consultancy Hospitality Risk Controls, queried the validity of a program in which the auditors earn money from the hotels they assess. "To pay someone to come out and say a place is safe is a little self-serving," he said.

In answer to the criticisms, Safehotels pointed out that it will carry out random checks on hotels, as well as an annual audit. "Pinkerton has no reason to let bad hotels into the system, because it has to protect its name," Andersen added. "We will not let hotels in just because they pay us an invoice. We have to build up our credibility."

The launch of Safehotels comes at a time of growing attention to security issues as a criterion for selecting preferred hotels. "We are increasingly taking this into consideration in our RFPs," said Albert Kilsdonk, Shell International manager of business travel. "There is often an assumption that if a hotel has a license, it must be safe."

Kilsdonk is communicating that employees will be better protected if they stay in a preferred property, which means it has been inspected by the company. "The message we give to travelers is that if they stay in a nonpreferred hotel, we cannot be liable for things we cannot see," he said.

Determining how safe a hotel truly is remains a perplexing problem. A recently released study by the Center for Hospitality Research at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., analyzed the security features of 2,100 U.S. lodgings and concluded that large, new hotels—especially those closest to airports—tend to have the best protected facilities. However, that needs to be balanced against the ability of smaller hotels to keep tabs on who is a legitimate guest.