by Rebecca Walker — August 14, 2009—The July bombings of the Ritz-Carlton and Marriot hotels in Jakarta, Indonesia as well as the 2008 terrorist attacks on hotels in Mumbai, India, have highlighted the ongoing struggles that hotel security director’s face in fortifying their establishments. It is this recent global attention on hotel security that has driven a new initiative by global consultancy and research firm Frost & Sullivan to develop a rating system based on the security programs at hotels around the world.
Frost & Sullivan, in partnership with SDS Group, an international counter-terrorism consultancy firm, have created a Security Excellence Program to conduct risk assessments on hotel security programs and provide recommendations for the hospitality industry.
This program was developed “so hotels can essentially learn the security infrastructure necessary to take them from being a soft to a hard target,” said Dorman Followwill, partner and director with Frost & Sullivan.
The assessment, which will be paid for by hotels, will be based on several categories pertaining to hotel security practices. Key issues include training and management of security staff, strength of emergency and contingency plans, assessment of security operations, perimeter and access control systems and the physical infrastructure of the hotel.
Conducting these assessments will provide benchmarking standards for hotels to compare the strength of their security program against other hotels. It will also develop a set of best practices in the hospitality sector and will allow an outlet for hotels to share security strategies.
For more information, see the Web site.
