Category Archives: Insurance

by | September 10, 2010 · 2:15 pm

Hotel Industry Swimming Pool Liability Risks: Arizona Hotels Vary In Enforcing Existing Codes Regarding Drinking In Pools, Music Stages, Public Parties And Oversized Crowds

Many resort pool parties are already limited to guests who’ve rented rooms and their friends, like the ones at the Hotel Valley Ho, or to guests who’ve purchased tickets, like the ones at the Clarion Hotel Scottsdale.

  • No more drinking or eating in the pool.
  • No music stages abutting the pool.
  • No open-to-the-public parties, except ones already booked.
  • No free entry and oversized crowds.

“In the last two years the scale and grandeur of the parties has picked up, and we are just trying to help the facilities understand the public-health impact before we start focusing on enforcement,” said John Kolman, director of the Maricopa County Environmental Services Department.

Kolman said inspectors have reminded managers to monitor pool capacity, to double-check that rescue equipment is always visible, to keep lounge chairs, stages and other structures 4 feet from pool edges, and most crucially, to stop inviting the public to their events.

Inspectors will continue to make unannounced checks through September, the traditional end of the pool-party season.

But at the W Scottsdale, general manager Leon Young said he’s seen real revenue losses since he started enforcement. He has, however, seen room sales go up slightly.

His hotel has made a name for itself hosting buzzy daytime bashes and nighttime swim parties, serving pool-friendly drinks such as frozen creamsicle cocktails or bottles of vodka with Gatorade on ice. Now, the second-floor pool will be pen only to those who rent cabanas, daybeds or rooms.

“Certainly, I can understand you don’t want to be floating next to a piece of lunch meat,” Young said. “But if we follow the rules about no glass near the pool, I don’t see why we couldn’t allow some drinks in the pool.”

Young is optimistic the county will be open to revisiting the regulations to create variances that would allow resorts and hotels to pursue party profits.

“We are rooms-focused in spring and peak season, but in summertime, it really is about the events and promotions you can organize to bring people in,” Young said.

Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/thingstodo/bars/articles/2010/08/27/20100827phoenix-hotel-pool-party-scene-drinking-banned.html#ixzz0zAPbsor7

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by | September 9, 2010 · 3:46 am

Hospitality Industry Information Security: The Key To Cyber-Security Is Adopting Encryption AND Tokenization, But Payment Processors Must Adopt Standards First

“Encryption is a process that jumbles personal data into unreadable letters and numbers every time a credit card is swiped….

…Any info about that credit card going forward … none of the credit card information is stored, it’s the token that is stored.”

“Encryption fundamentally is a math algorithm, but it’s a very complicated math algorithm,” Roman said during a recent telephone interview. The information can only be deciphered with a key.

“When an encrypted signal is sent to the intended party, the intended party’s encryption has a key to decrypt and read the message and display it on the screen in readable alpha numerics,” Roman said. “It’s built into the receiving end of each encryption software.”

Encryption jumbles information as it’s transmitted from one system to the other, but it doesn’t necessarily account for data that’s being stored. That’s where tokenization comes in, said Chainrai Waney, an IT consultant who’s worked in data center operations for more than 25 years.

When that card is swiped there’s some sort of a front-end application that generates a token (a line of random numbers) that has nothing to do with that credit card number,” he said. “Any info about that credit card going forward … none of the credit card information is stored, it’s the token that is stored.”
 
A token is a globally unique identifier, generated randomly, and it only has meaning to the sender who provides it and to the processing center that’s purchased it, Roman said.

Noble has yet to adopt tokenization, Garrido said. The company is waiting for payment processors to make the next move.

“They’ve talked about being able to take the data out of the property,” he said. In other words, the processing companies would store the data and send a token back to vendors. No definitive solution has yet been approved, however.   ‘

For more:  http://www.hospitalitynet.org/external/4048209.html

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by | September 8, 2010 · 5:41 am

Hospitality Industry Health Risks: Hotel Managers Are Finding Innovative Ways To Detect Bedbugs Early But Eradication Is Costly

“Short of putting a bedbug-sniffing beagle at your door to check everyone before they come in, you’re going to get bedbugs,” he said. “Dealing with them is the cost of doing business these days.”

State inspectors have the authority to shut down an establishment that poses an "imminent health hazard" involving fire, flood, sewage backup, rodent infestation, bed bug infestation or "any other condition that could endanger the health and safety of guests, employees and the general public."

The costs of coping with bedbugs are significant, and they are not covered by most insurance policies because they are seen as a maintenance issue. Hiring bedbug-sniffing dogs, which is considered the most effective detection technique, costs about $250 for a 1,200-square-foot retail store and as much as $10,000 for a million-square-foot department store.

 

Eliminating infestations is also costly, ranging from $750 for a few rooms in an office building to $70,000 for a large apartment complex. And that is just for the application of the cocktail of pesticides that kills bedbugs. It costs an additional 40 percent for the gold standard regimen of placing all the contents of an office or retail space into a heat chamber — bedbugs die at 120 degrees — and then spraying pesticides in the temporarily empty rooms.

An employee first discovered a bedbug in the 137-room hotel in 2003, and Mr. Tyler has since instituted a comprehensive bedbug detection program to find the blood-sucking insects before a guest does.

  • Mr. Tyler created a position called “bedbug technician” — an employee whose sole job is to go from room to room checking for bedbugs.
  • There is also a bedbug bounty of $10 paid to any employee who finds one.
  • If a bedbug is found, the room and all adjacent rooms are taken out of service for up to five days while they are steam-cleaned and chemically treated to eliminate the bugs and their eggs.
  • The mattresses in the rooms are also discarded. The total cost for each room is $2,500, including lost bookings.

“It sounds like a lot of money, but the value of a good reputation is infinite,” Mr. Tyler said. “Your biggest fear is that someone will get bitten and post something about it on an online travel site, and that’d be a killer.”

Bedbugs used to be solely a residential problem, but they are showing up in commercial settings, and not just in places with beds like hotels, nursing homes and apartment complexes. Increasingly, pest control companies report finding bedbugs in office buildings, movie theaters, clothing stores, food plants, factories and even airplanes.

“To stay ahead of bedbugs, I recommend having the dogs come through quarterly,” said Pepe Peruyero, chief executive of J&K Canine Academy in High Springs, Fla., which trains bedbug-sniffing dogs and offers inspections for large buildings like department stores and school dormitories. However, he added, many customers cannot afford it and instead choose to rely on the vigilance of employees after an initial dog check comes up clean.

“It takes about four to seven hours per room” for the combination heat and pesticide procedure and a couple of hours on three separate occasions if using pesticides alone, said Judy Black, technical director for the Steritech Group, based in Charlotte, N.C., which provides pest control and other quality control services to commercial customers. “Getting rid of bedbugs is not quick or easy.”

For more:   http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/08/business/08bedbug.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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by | September 2, 2010 · 9:43 am

Hospitality Industry Health Risks: Hotel Owners Must Must Undertake All Eradication Efforts To Avoid “Bed Bug” Infestation As Even “False Alarms” Are Reported

These are anxious times in the hotel industry. The pests — which hide in mattresses and bite people while they sleep — are

State inspectors have the authority to shut down an establishment that poses an "imminent health hazard" involving fire, flood, sewage backup, rodent infestation, bed bug infestation or "any other condition that could endanger the health and safety of guests, employees and the general public."

constantly in the news, and no place feels safe anymore.

Hotel and inn operators are feeling particularly vulnerable. Bedbugs have a habit of hitchhiking from place to place in suitcases. And disgruntled guests have a habit of broadcasting their bad experiences. A single negative posting on the likes of tripadvisor.com making a charming inn sound like a bedbug-and-breakfast can bring an establishment to its knees.

“I think the only people who were paying attention before were those who were dealing with it personally,’’ said Jeffrey White, an entomologist with BedBug Central, an online bedbug resource and host of “BedBug Central TV,’’ a weekly webcast. “With bedbugs popping up on buses and trains and theaters — places which everybody tends to use — it’s driving the media.’’

“Everyone has a right to voice their opinion, but it’s disheartening,’’ said Paul Sacco, president and chief executive officer of the Massachusetts Lodging Association. “It’s just awful that people can make claims that it takes forever to substantiate and forever to get them off when they’re false.’’

Another scourge in the industry is The Bedbug Registry, a public database of sightings in hotels and apartments in the United States and Canada. It was started four years ago by Maciej Ceglowski, a California computer programmer seeking revenge on bedbugs after being bitten by one in a San Francisco hotel. The sightings aren’t verified and are usually submitted anonymously. There have been 51 reports of bedbugs in Massachusetts hotels, Ceglowski said.

For more:  http://www.boston.com/news/health/articles/2010/09/02/

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by | September 1, 2010 · 7:39 am

Hotel Industry Water Safety Risks: Hotel Management Must Check Water Filtration Systems Regularly To Eliminate Risk Of Legionella Bacteria

“We did find Legionella in the water system of the hotel,” said Vincent Conte, deputy director of epidemiology, disease control and immunization services at the health department.
 
Health officials praised the hotel’s owner and management for their quick response to the crisis and efforts to disinfect the water supply and system in the 54-story, 677-unit building opened in December 2008.

A study by the Miami-Dade County Health Department released Tuesday found seven confirmed and three “probable” cases of people who contracted the water-borne Legionnaires’ disease after staying at the luxurious Epic Hotel and Residences last fall.

In addition, one man, a 57-year-old tourist from England, died in November.

Seven of the ill hotel guests have fully recovered and three others are in the process of recovering, county officials said. One of the guests was from Germany and another from Spain.

None were Miami-Dade residents.

The only connection between the tourists is that they stayed at the Epic Hotel, health officials said.

Their complex investigation focused on the water at the hotel and condominium development at 270 Biscayne Blvd. Way in downtown Miami.

While county health officials said they were not able to prove “100 percent” that the filtered water at the hotel caused the disease, Legionella bacteria was found in 23 of 25 cultures collected by the hotel’s contractor. Similar results were found in the health department samples.

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/09/01/1801654/study-links-legionnaires-cases.html#ixzz0yI5crfY9

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by | August 31, 2010 · 11:39 am

Hospitality Industry Health Insurance Trends: Large Employers Are Starting To Require Employees To Disclose “Unhealthy Habits” With Resulting Health Insurance Premiums Being Higher Than “Healthier” Workers

“…Navistar Inc. executives turned up the heat on smokers five years ago as part of a pioneering move to improve employee health and rein in medical costs…”

     Smoking employees are now required to disclose their habit during the open enrollment period for health insurance or, if they fail to truthfully answer, risk violating the company’s ethical business policy.

Some critics consider it intrusive and discriminatory to penalize unhealthy behaviors like smoking and reward people for taking positive actions such as losing weight. Nevertheless, other employers—fed up with rising obesity rates and related health costs—are following Navistar’s lead. Nearly two-thirds of large employers either have a smoking penalty or plan to impose one during the next three to five years, according to a 2010 Hewitt Associates Inc. survey of nearly 600 employers.

As long as Navistar employees continue to light up, they pay higher premiums—$50 more monthly. The policy applies only to nonunion workers, slightly more than half of Navistar’s 11,000 U.S. employees; union health benefits fall under a separate contract. Navistar realized the smoking surcharge could be controversial. “We were a little hesitant that we were setting ourselves up for some employee complaints,” says Dawn Weddle, wellness and behavioral health manager at Warrenville, Illinois-based Navistar, which makes trucks, RVs and other vehicles. Feedback was generally positive, with some “rumblings” but no formal complaints, Weddle says. “You have to remember: The majority of employees don’t smoke.”

     The insurance premium penalty is helping to reduce the number of smokers even more. The percentage of employees reporting that they smoke has declined from 10.3 percent in 2005 to 8.6 percent in late 2009.

         In Alabama, however, state officials have chosen a positive incentive to encourage high-risk employees to consult a doctor or seek other medical help. The state provides a $25 monthly discount on health insurance premiums to all employees who receive such wellness screenings, whether their medical risks are high or low. But employees identified as high risk must take an additional step, such as seeing a doctor or enrolling in a wellness program, to retain that discount. Alabama decided not to tie the incentive to specific health goals but rather to simply try to motivate employees to seek medical feedback, says William Ashmore, chief executive officer of the State Employees’ Insurance Board in Alabama.

For more:   http://www.workforce.com/section/benefits-compensation/feature/special-report-health-benefits-butting-in/index.html

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by | August 30, 2010 · 7:59 am

Hotel Industry “Art Insurance” Issues: Hotels Are Increasingly Hanging “Real Artwork” In Lobbies And Hallways To Please More Discriminating Clientele

“Hoteliers are not only trying to come up with a theme or a style that attracts customers, but they are approaching it in a much more professional and involved way,” said Sean Hennessey, chief executive of Lodging Investment Advisors, a consulting firm in Valhalla, N.Y.

“It used to be that you could get away with just slapping something up in the lobby,” he added, “but more and more customers are looking and evaluating it much more closely.”

For the James, meeting that demand has meant trying to reflect the artistic microclimate of SoHo. Though many of the artists who once made the area a creative mecca have fled, an emerging art scene is still represented through nonprofit institutions there that support artists and show their work.

Denihan Hospitality Group, which is developing the hotel, operates another James Hotel in Chicago that is also dedicated to emerging art. At the Surrey, one of its New York hotels, work by established names like Jenny Holzer, Claes Oldenburg and William Kentridge nods to its location on East 76th Street, near major art showcases like the Whitney Museum of American Art.

For more:   http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/30/nyregion/30hotelart.html?src=me

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by | August 24, 2010 · 6:46 am

“Hospitality 2015” From Deloitte: Hotel Ownership And Management Must Position Companies For Future Success, Profitability And Risk Reduction

CLICK ON PICTURE TO OPEN: "Hospitality 2015: Game Changers Or Spectators" From Deloitte

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by | August 20, 2010 · 5:40 am

Hospitality Industry Cybercrime Risk Management: “Cloud Computing” Providers Will Carry “Cyber Insurance To Mitigate The Risk Of Data Breaches Or Unexpected Downtime”

The manager of a fine hotel would never allow an electrician or plumber to work without being insured; it’s standard fare on service contracts in the physical world. Not so in cloud computing, where provider coverage in the form of cyber insurance is far from a given. This undoubtedly will change as businesses push providers to share the risks of a data breach or unexpected downtime, experts said.

Such large cloud computing providers as Salesforce.com Inc. do carry cyber insurance to mitigate the risk of data breaches or unexpected downtime, but “smaller providers are not carrying insurance and have no plan to [do so] until the larger customers push back and say, ‘You’re in our risk profile now,'” said Drew Bartkiewicz, vice president of technology and new media markets at The Hartford Financial Services Group, a cyber insurance company based in New York.

For the cloud computing model to work, cloud customers, as well as cloud providers, need to share the risk, according to Drue Reeves, director of research for the Burton Group in Midvale, Utah. If a provider were wholly responsible for the data of hundreds or thousands of tenants, it simply wouldn’t be able to buy enough insurance to cover the liability. To protect themselves in this risky situation, cyber insurers generally cap their policies at $10 million or $15 million, forcing providers and large customers to keep shopping, experts said.

For more:  http://searchcio.techtarget.com/news/2240021040/Cyber-insurance-mitigates-the-risk-of-data-breaches-in-cloud-computing

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by | August 19, 2010 · 10:16 am

Hospitality Industry Employment Risks: Hospitality Management Must Have “Valid” Reasons To Fire Employees

  • Make sure that you have a valid reason for firing (or laying off) the employee. Some invalid reasons include: retaliation, complaining about OSHA violations, discrimination, alien status, and any violation of public policy.
  • Keep it confidential: a company-wide Eblast is probably not the best approach to alerting others in the company of the employees’ situation. Rather, only telling those individuals that need to know is the best approach to ensuring that the employee does not hear about his firing before it happens.
  • Plan ahead: sounds simple enough, but by considering all the legal requirements you need to comport with before firing the employee, you will also alleviate a lot of legal concerns that may occur post-firing. This may include: severance offers, monies due, terms in the employment contract, company policies, etc.
  • Keep a paper trail: keeping copies of performance reviews, relevant correspondence, and other personnel documents will help protect you should there be a lawsuit later on.
  • The employee should not be completely surprised by the firing or lay-off. Whether it is keeping employees abreast of the struggling finances of the company, or alerting the worker to poor job performance, there should be a dialogue before the employment termination.

Although a majority of the American workforce is based on “at will” employment, essentially meaning that the employer-employee relationship can be severed at any time, there are still some viable concerns over a wrongful termination suit in any situation. Making sure you have a valid reason for firing an employee, and planning the conversation ahead of time will help with the actual firing and protect your company from many of the legal issues that follow.

In the end, honesty is almost always the best policy, and usually appreciated as the employee can take your reasons with them as they job hunt.

For more:  http://www.reuters.com/article/idUS348304971720100817

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