Category Archives: Hotel Industry

Hospitality Industry Legal Update: “W Hotel Chain Friendly to Prostitutes, New Jersey Couple’s Legal Filing Claims”

Anna Burgese says she was attacked early last year in the lobby of a South Beach W Hotel by drunken hookers80629236 who mistakenly believed she was competition. She and her husband say they hired undercover agents to visit W Hotels all over the country, according to Philadelphia Daily News, and found prostitution runs rampant.

The W Hotel chain openly allows prostitution in their facilities, a New Jersey couple claims in a recent legal filing obtained by the Philadelphia Daily News.

Anna Burgese of Medford, N.J., says she was attacked early last year in the lobby of a South Beach W Hotel by drunken hookers who mistakenly believed she was competition. The attack was captured on surveillance video.

As a result, Anna Burgese and husband Joseph say they hired undercover agents to visit W Hotels all over the country, according to the newspaper.

The legal filing claims that they found that prostitution runs rampant in the hotels and even found that a sex worker at one W Hotel “used the concierge desk to charge her cellphones and store her purse.”

For more: http://nydn.us/1w27joR

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Filed under Crime, Employee Practices, Guest Issues, Hotel Employees, Hotel Industry, Liability, Management And Ownership, Risk Management

Hospitality Industry Management Update: “How Much Guest Data Do You Have a Right to Use?”

Pillsbury does his best to makes sure the question of data ownership is ambiguous in his contracts, Bosworth says.big data “It’s left as a, ‘Let’s leave it so that the contract is unclear on this point.’” That’s not a bad way to go. “There’s a strong motivation for the parties to play nice together,” Bennett says. “Because if a big fight breaks out over who owns the data, the answer is going to come down to, ‘None of you own this data. This is the data of the individual.’”

Using big data to gain insights about hotel guests is a relatively new development in the lodging industry. When done right, it can provide actionable intel to hoteliers that can boost room rates and drive more business to loyalty programs and marketing campaigns. And there are plenty of tech outfits stepping up to lend their expertise to hotels. “We have 18 companies now that we’ve invested in through Thayer Ventures, our venture capital arm, all in the hospitality travel technology space,” says Lee Pillsbury, co-chairman and chief executive officer of Thayer Lodging Group. “One is able to analyze the number of airline passengers overnighting in New York City in any date in the future.” If there’s a huge snowstorm coming to New York, Pillsbury says, the company will take into account the weather forecast and the 600 flights that will be canceled and determine the number of people who will now be staying overnight in Las Vegas as a result.

For more: http://bit.ly/1rX5JUQ

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Filed under Hotel Industry, Management And Ownership, Social Media, Technology

Hospitality Industry Management Update: “Common Fire Code Violations” (Video)

[vimeo https://vimeo.com/107482118 w=500&h=281]

Petra Risk Solutions’ Loss Control Manager, Matt Karp, offers a P3 Hospitality Risk Report – ‘Common Fire Code Violations’. 

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 Fire, Hotel Industry, Insurance, Maintenance, Management And Ownership, Risk Management, Training

Hospitality Industry OSHA Update: “Updates to OSHA’s Recordkeeping Rule”

“OSHA will now receive crucial reports of fatalities and severe work-related injuries and illnesses that will significantly osha-logoenhance the agency’s ability to target our resources to save lives and prevent further injury and illness. This new data will enable the agency to identify the workplaces where workers are at the greatest risk and target our compliance assistance and enforcement resources accordingly.”

-Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health, Dr. David Michaels OSHA’s updated recordkeeping rule expands the list of severe injuries that employers must report to OSHA.

As of January 1, 2015, all employers must report

  1. All work-related fatalities within 8 hours.
  2. All work-related inpatient hospitalizations, all amputations and all losses of an eye within 24 hours.

You can report to OSHA by

  1. Calling OSHA’s free and confidential number at 1-800-321-OSHA (6742).
  2. Calling your closest Area Office during normal business hours.
  3. Using the new online form that will soon be available.

Only fatalities occurring within 30 days of the work-related incident must be reported to OSHA. Further, for an in-patient hospitalization, amputation or loss of an eye, these incidents must be reported to OSHA only if they occur within 24 hours of the work-related incident.

For more: http://1.usa.gov/1oJPwyW

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Filed under Claims, Employee Practices, Hotel Employees, Hotel Industry, Management And Ownership, Risk Management

Hospitality Industry Management Update: “Legionnaires’ Disease: Awareness and Prevention” (Video)

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Filed under Food Illnesses, Guest Issues, Health, Hotel Employees, Hotel Industry, Management And Ownership, Risk Management

Hospitality Industry Legal Update: “Hotel Industry Threatens Legal Action Over New Wage Law”

Supporters dispute claims that the move was intended to help labor groups increase membership and say the higherLA mayor wages will lift working families out of poverty. Under the law, hotels with union workers can be exempted from the $15.37 hourly wage if workers agree…City Hall leaders on Wednesday rejected the criticisms. Councilman Mike Bonin, who advocated passage of the law, questioned the prediction that 533 hotel jobs will be lost in his Westside district.

Ratcheting up their opposition to a new law requiring larger hotels to pay workers $15.37 an hour, representatives for the hotel industry on Wednesday threatened to sue the city over the ordinance.

Standing outside Los Angeles City Hall, hotel operators and business leaders said they are considering a lawsuit based on federal laws. They also released new numbers predicting 1,488 jobs — including at least 140 in the San Fernando Valley — would be lost as Los Angeles hotels lay off workers to compensate for the wage hike.

For more: http://bit.ly/1ugf6kx

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Filed under Employee Benefits, Hotel Employees, Hotel Industry, Management And Ownership, Risk Management

Hospitality Industry Health Update: “CDC Confirms First Case of Ebola in US”

U.S. health officials have been preparing since summer in case an individual traveler arrived here unknowingly infected, telling hospitals what infection-control steps to take to prevent the virus from661TexasEbola spreading in health facilities. People boarding planes in the outbreak zone are checked for fever, but symptoms can begin up to 21 days after exposure. Ebola isn’t contagious until symptoms begin, and it takes close contact with bodily fluids to spread.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed on Tuesday that a patient being treated at a Dallas hospital has tested positive for Ebola, the first case diagnosed in the United States.

The patient left Liberia on September 19 and arrived in the United States on September 20, CDC director, Dr. Tom Frieden told reporters at a press conference Tuesday. It’s the first patient to be diagnosed with this particular strain of Ebola outside of Africa.

For more: http://fxn.ws/1nLAMVj

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Filed under Guest Issues, Health, Hotel Industry, Management And Ownership, Risk Management

Hospitality Industry Legal Update: “Guest Room Privacy and the Fourth Amendment”

In order to create and follow an eviction policy that promotes compliance with the Fourth Amendment, a hotel should identify behaviors that justify eviction.  This requires consultation of the law, including any statutes that govern hotel policies.cop car  The hotel should then train its staff to recognize and respond to behavior that triggers eviction.  A hotel should also provide guests with its eviction policy or communicate in some way the types of behavior that could trigger an eviction.  Finally, in the event of an eviction, the hotel must take steps to communicate to the guest that he or she is being evicted.

Hotels are faced with a delicate balancing act when it comes to maintaining guest privacy.  Hotel staff must comply with police investigations when noncompliance would constitute obstruction of justice.  At the same time, hotel employees must recognize their guests’ Fourth Amendment right to be protected from unreasonable searches and seizures.  If hotel employees comply with an unreasonable search or seizure that results in harm to the guest, the hotel could find itself exposed to civil liability.

Courts have recognized that the Fourth Amendment protection from unreasonable searches and seizures applies to searches and seizures in hotel and motel rooms.  Certain exceptions allow for warrantless searches and seizures, including consent.  In broad terms, the consent exception means that a party’s agreement, actual or implied to a search and/or seizure renders a warrant unnecessary.

For more: http://bit.ly/1pompRR

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Filed under Employee Practices, Guest Issues, Hotel Industry, Management And Ownership, Privacy, Risk Management

Hospitality Industry Management Update: “Common Fire Code Violations” (Video)

[vimeo https://vimeo.com/107482118 w=500&h=281]

Petra Risk Solutions’ Loss Control Manager, Matt Karp, offers a P3 Hospitality Risk Report – ‘Common Fire Code Violations’. 

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 Fire, Hotel Industry, Insurance, Maintenance, Management And Ownership, Risk Management, Training

Hospitality Industry Technology Update: “Why the Hotel Industry Needs Google, Amazon or Priceline to Clean Up the Mess It Has Created”

 It is time to understand that spectacular innovation will disrupt our industry, and embracing this will help to make this transition go smooth.google-76522_640 Creating a level playing field will cause players in this industry to seize their business. Travelocity seems to be closing down in the next year, and my prediction is that we will see a rise of new players in technology, that can finally interact with us, and cause traditional PMSs, to go under, and with that all kinds of legacy companies that made their business out of the mess we created.

Have you ever wondered why you automatically get the newest version of Facebook on your phone, have made Google a synonym for search, Booking.com has just signed up its 500.000th accommodation and hotels are stuck with legacy systems for decades already, and new initiatives seem to never really take off or struggle to get traction at least? Surely these new systems seem to provide a modern solution to topics we are struggling with (online travel agencies, technology, demand management and pricing)? I started to work in the hospitality technology industry in 1999, to start up SynXis in Europe. We had a revolutionary product, ‘cloud based’, that would connect the PMS to the land of distribution, be a central reservation system for a hotel call-center and would make your scanned brochure (website) come alive with a booking engine that connected directly to the system. In 1999 Google was just starting up, hotels still received the majority of their reservations through their callcenter/reservations department and Booking.com was still Bookings.nl and just signed up their first hotel in Amsterdam.

For more: http://bit.ly/1uJF5ii

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Filed under Hotel Industry, Management And Ownership, Social Media, Technology