Monthly Archives: December 2011

by | December 20, 2011 · 7:01 am

Hospitality Industry Property Risks: Thirty-Five Niagara Falls Motel Rooms Extensively Damaged By "Partying High School Students"; Difficulties In Collecting From Parents And School

“…The room was a prime example of the swath of destruction cut through the motel. Holes had been punched in the wall, furniture broken and bathroom ceiling tiles had been ripped out in the bathroom…”

“…Initial estimates the owners have received peg the amount of damage to between $50,000 and $100,000…”

“…(the owner) simply hopes that parents of the students will step up and take responsibility…That hasn’t happened so far…”

Thirty-five rooms at the Avenue Inn on Lundy’s Lane were rented to high school students from Welland’s Notre Dame College School the night of the school’s Christmas semiformal, which was held up the street at the Americana Resort and Conference Centre. Overnight on Friday, Dec. 9, 22 of those rooms were damaged extensively.

“I don’t want to see this happen again,” David Linqi Liu, general manager and co-owner of the Avenue Inn motel said as he continued to sift through the wreckage of what was once Room 135 at the motel. As he walks around the room, the crunching of broken glass beneath his feet can be heard.
“We’ve had a lot of parties here, but we’ve never had this much damage,” said Harry Liu, David’s son who helps his dad and mother, Ling Cao run the Avenue as he flipped through an album of photos documenting the destruction. “A toilet was smashed, furniture and beds were overturned, a door was kicked in, a door was broken. Even an oven door was ripped off and its glass broken.”
According to Robert Forget, the on-duty manager the night of the incident, police were called by a motel guest not associated with the party. “They did show up for a little bit but they told us it was our responsibility,” Forget said. “They said it was a civil matter, not criminal.”

For more:  http://www.niagarathisweek.com/iphone/news/article/1262771–students-wreak-havoc-in-falls

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by | December 19, 2011 · 6:14 am

Hospitality Industry Employee Risks: Tennessee Hotels Fined By Department Of Labor For "Fair Labor Standards Act" Minimum Wage Violations

“…Violations included charging excessive room and board to employees who also lived at a property or paying housekeepers by the room cleaned, resulting in a person’s pay falling below the $7.25 minimumwage; paying “straight time” for all hours worked, including overtime; and failing to pay for all hours worked by temporary employees…”

The U.S. Department of Labor said Wednesday that 35 franchised hotels and motels, including 11 in Middle Tennessee, violated minimum wage, overtime and other labor laws during the fiscal year ended Sept. 30. The agency said it fined those businesses a cumulative $14,552 and recovered more than $173,000 in wages owed to 283 employees.

Some hotel and motel operators also misclassified employees as independent contractors, denying them legal protections under federal labor laws, the agency said.

The citations and fines are part of a multiyear enforcement initiative focusing on Tennessee’s hotel and motel industry, in which regulators have “found widespread noncompliance with the minimum wage, overtime and record-keeping provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act,” the agency said in a news release.

For more:  http://www.tennessean.com/article/20111215/BUSINESS01/312150046/U-S-Labor-fines-11-Middle-TN-hotels-wage-violations?odyssey=tab%7Ctopnews%7Ctext%7CFRONTPAGE

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by | December 18, 2011 · 6:55 am

Hospitality Industry Information Security: Study Finds Hotels Are "Prime Targets" For Financial Data Theft; "Infiltration Of Smartphones Through Bluetooth Technology"

“…Hotels also are prime targets for people looking to steal financial data. In a study of 200 data-breach cases, Trustwave’s SpiderLabs, the online security company’s research arm, found 38 percent occurred at hotels or resorts…”

Two key challenges for travelers involve the use of unsecured wireless networks at hotels, airports and other public venues and the infiltration of smartphones through Bluetooth technology.

Identity theft can be a rude awakening for many business travelers. Last year, identity theft made up 19 percent of the 1.3 million complaints stored in the Consumer Sentinel Network, a secure online database available to law-enforcement agencies.

Experts say business travelers are especially vulnerable because they increasingly rely on electronic devices that easily can be lost or hacked. Credant Technologies, a data-protection company, found that travelers have lost 11,000 mobile devices at the busiest U.S. airports this year, 37.5 percent of them laptops and 37.2 percent tablets or smartphones.

“You are 15 times more likely to have your identity stolen than to have your car broken into,” said Todd Davis, chairman and CEO of LifeLock, an identity-theft protection company.

For more:  http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20111218/BUSINESS/112180321/Identity-theft-risk-increases-when-traveling?odyssey=mod%7Cnewswell%7Ctext%7CBusiness%7Cs

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by | December 17, 2011 · 11:35 am

Hospitality Industry Guest Safety: New York Hotel Elevator Malfunctions "Killing Hotel Guest" Hours After "Electrical Maintenance Repairs"

“…Electrical maintenance work was being performed on an elevator just hours before it malfunctioned, killing an advertising executive in Midtown…”

Photo by Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times

“…The last fatal elevator accident in the city also involved Transel: Robert Melito, 44, a technician for the company, was servicing an elevator on the 10th floor of a building at 230 West 38th Street on Sept. 23 when he fell to his death…”

Suzanne Hart, 41, was crushed to death on Wednesday morning after the elevator she was stepping into lurched upward, pinning her between the outside of the car and the wall of the elevator shaft.

Mr. Sclafani said the department would be conducting citywide sweeps of elevators maintained by Transel Elevator Inc., the company that serviced the elevators at 285 Madison Avenue, where the accident occurred.

The company maintains elevators at nearly a dozen prominent buildings in the city, according to Transel’s Web site, including the Graybar Building, the BMW Building and the Hippodrome Building. Additional clients listed on the Web site include Carnegie Hall and the Plaza Hotel.

For more:  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/16/nyregion/elevator-that-killed-yr-executive-was-undergoing-maintenance-city-says.html?_r=1

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by | December 16, 2011 · 7:03 am

Hospitality Industry Crime Prevention: Montana Police Task Force Trains Hotel Employees To Look For Evidence Of Drug And Prostitution Activity

Employees are taught to look for signs such as people who pay only in cash, give false vehicle information or don’t let housekeeping into their rooms for long periods of time.

The task force recently began implementing a program in which hotel and motel employees are trained to look for evidence of illegal drug activity coming from rooms, and to know who to call if they see something suspicious.

The recent arrests of three people suspected of running a prostitution operation in a room at the TownHouse Inn was a result of a tip made by an employee of the hotel to the Central Montana Drug Task Force.

The employee was trained by Sgt. Chris Hickman of the Great Falls Police Department, a member of the multi-agency task force, to recognize signs of suspicious behavior. While it was initially suspected that the three individuals were running a drug operation, Hickman said he was glad that officers were able to shut down the alleged prostitution as a result cooperation from hotel staff.

 According to Hickman, police are pursuing three active cases because of tips from cooperative lodging employees in Great Falls, but an unfortunate by-product of that cooperation can sometimes be a sullied reputation for the business if a tip leads to a publicized arrest.

For more:  http://www.greatfallstribune.com/article/20111214/NEWS01/112140311/Great-Falls-program-netted-prostitution-ring-relies-hotel-staff-tips

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by | December 15, 2011 · 6:47 am

Hospitality Industry Guest Safety: Hotels And Resorts Face Lawsuits Over Severe Burns To Children From Guest Room "Glass Fireplaces"; Glass Can Reach Temperatures Of 400 Degrees

“…more than 2,000 children ages 5 and younger have suffered burns from fireplace glass since 1999, according to a federal estimate. Some burn specialists think the actual toll is higher…”

“…(one) lawsuit, filed this June in federal court in Denver, seeks damages from several fireplace companies along with operators of the resort. They knew “these fireplaces would be installed at heights for which the decorative glass front was perfectly suited to contact by infants and small children,” the lawsuit states, yet “took no steps to guard against direct contact with the super-heated glass or to meaningfully warn about the extreme…burn potential.”

Citing the “extreme risk of injury,” the American Burn Association, representing burn surgeons, nurses and therapists, last week became the latest to call for adoption of a mandatory safety standard. It joins such groups as Consumers Union and the Consumer Federation of America.

The glass commonly reaches temperatures of 400 degrees, as hot as an oven on broil, and is usually placed at a perfect height for curious toddlers to touch or fall into. These encounters can easily result in skin graft surgery and painful recovery, with medical costs in the six figures. One safety expert called it an “insidious and unappreciated hazard.”

Consumer groups and anguished parents are urging the Consumer Product Safety Commission to impose federal safety regulations. But the fireplace industry, which up to now has policed itself, is resisting. To head off federal regulation and more lawsuits from families of burned kids, manufacturers are working on a revision to their current voluntary standard that will be taken up by an industry technical panel on Dec. 13.

For more:  http://www.tucsonsentinel.com/nationworld/report/121211_fireplace_burns_regs/fireplace-industry-resists-regulation-over-child-burns/

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by | December 14, 2011 · 6:21 am

Hospitality Industry Information Security Risks: Most Hotels And Restaurants Have Experienced A "Cyber Attack" In The Past Year; "Intellectual Property Protection" Is Too Often Ignored

“…Seventy-three percent of small-to-middle-sized companies experienced a cyber attack in 2010, and 30% of those attacks were extremely effective, according to Symantec, a software security developer based in Mountan View, Calif…”

“…estimates are that this year…the cost associated with each breach has gone up to $214 per record…Negligence is a big issue,” “

With the increase in worldwide cyber crimes, smaller private businesses may be more vulnerable than larger ones, said an executive of Chubb Group of Insurance Companies. “It’s the perfect cyber storm,” said Ken Goldstein, vice president of the Chubb Group of Insurance Companies. “We’re in a bad economy; we’ve got private companies, generally small to middle in market size, that are strapped in what they can spend on intellectual property protection,” he said.

At the same time, he said, new technology means “cyber thieves can essentially hack from anywhere around the globe.”

Cyber crimes can do serious harm to an organization’s bottom line. According to Ponemon’s, the median annualized cost of cyber crimes for the 50 organizations studied was $5.9 million, with a range of $1.5 million to $36.5 million. This represents a 56% increase since last year.

“Multiply that by the number of customers that you service; it could be a sizable amount of money that a company would have to pay out of pocket,” Goldstein said.

The most costly cyber crimes are those caused by malicious code, denial of service, stolen devices and Web-based attacks, Goldstein said. Besides deliberate cyber theft, Goldstein says company information loss sometimes is a byproduct of employee negligence. An employee losing their mobile device at a hotel or restaurant, for example, could lead to a breach, he said.

For more:  http://www.fa-mag.com/fa-news/9382-smaller-private-companies-at-greater-risk-of-cyber-attack-.html

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by | December 13, 2011 · 6:48 am

Hospitality Industry Reputation Risks: Hotel's Must Protect Against Events And Fallout From Attacks Against Company's Brand And Reputation

“… there is no shortage of reputational risks from social media and the Internet in general, from corporate manslaughter, money laundering, corporate corruption, and terrorism…”

With the boom in social media, interest in reputational risk has itself boomed. The term refers to a company’s risk of having its reputation damaged because of certain events or incidents and the fallout that takes place because of these incidents. In some cases, the effects can be severe enough to put a company out of business.

ReputationGuard was designed to help insureds cope with reputational threats, providing access to reputation and crisis communications firms Burson-Marsteller and Porter Novelli and coverage for costs associated with avoiding or minimizing the potential impact of negative publicity.

There are two categories of coverage:

  1. For reputation attacks: a public attack upon a company’s reputation. The costs of hiring communications experts from the Chartis panel and communications costs.
  2. For reputation threats: acts or events that the company believes, if made public, would have a material impact on the company’s reputation and would be seen as a breach of trust by the company’s stakeholders.

Insurers will not exclude any business segments but most interest is in those with revenues of $500,000 to $2 billion.

For more:  http://www.insurancejournal.com/uncategorized/2011/12/13/226947.htm

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by | December 12, 2011 · 6:50 am

Hospitality Industry Security Risks: Hotels And Restaurants Must Have "Armed Robbery Prevention" Procedures; Available From Insurance Carriers

“…Because hospitality establishments have a certain amount of cash on hand, agents and cashiers may face the potential danger of robberies…”

  1. Is there a high degree of visibility?
  2. Are shop or outlet displays free from posters and signs?
  3. Are  counters and cases low enough for line of sight?
  4. Are all sections of business are visible from central cashier area?
  5. Do you call authorities if you suspect someone?
  6. Have you secured your desk or cashier operation if there is a reason for concern?
  7. Have you installed a holdup alarm system and instructed staff in its use?
  8. Do you keep minimal cash?
  9. Is your routine for bank deposits varied?
  10. Is your safe locked at all times?
  11. Have you taught robbery prevention to employees?
  12. Are references checked before hiring new employees?
  13. Do two or more people open and close your business?

For more:  http://www.hospitalitynet.org/news/154000320/4054068.html

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by | December 11, 2011 · 6:38 am

Hospitality Industry Food Safety: The "2009 FDA Food Code" Established New Federal Standards Limiting Handling Of Foods With "Bare Hands", Lowered Refrigeration Temperatures

“…The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Food Code (established) a new set of federal standards in 2009…multiple federal agencies, with input from business interests…(made) several changes in how health inspections are conducted…”

CLICK ON "FDA" TO VIEW FDA FOOD CODE

  • Restaurants will have to put date markers on all food containers in their refrigerators and freezers
  • Prepared food may be kept for no more than four or seven days, depending on the temperature to which it’s chilled
  • Cooks and kitchen help will no longer be allowed to touch ready-to-eat foods with their bare hands
  • Gloves must be used
  • The standard is minimal bare-hand contact
  • Refrigeration standards are being tightened
  • Potentially hazardous foods – those that can make you sick if you’re not careful – must be chilled to 41 degrees

For more:  http://www.starnewsonline.com/article/20111210/articles/111219993?p=1&tc=pg

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