Hotels are massive business investments that require extensive hotel loss prevention and asset protection techniques. These crimes can affect profits and guest and employee safety. Tracking them is a smart hotel loss prevention technique.
1. Walkouts
Imagine Mr A. doesn’t show up to check out and hasn’t paid. Or, your hotel restaurant becomes a victim of a dine-and-ditch. Not receiving payment for services provided has a clear link to losses.
Monitor the security gaps in your guest journey that make walkouts possible. Address them to ensure you’re not operating at a loss.
2. Robberies and attempted robberies
Robberies involve the use of force or threats to steal property. Therefore, it can include the robbery of the hotel or the hotel guests. Track causes, methods of robbery, security issues and the kinds of goods targeted to understand robberies and work to prevent them.
3. Unauthorised intrusion / burglary
Burglary is similar to robbery - it is an intrusion or break-in, usually with the intent to steal. However, even if you’re caught simply pushing a window open, you can be charged with burglary.
4. Fraud
Fraud is huge in the hospitality industry. Internal fraud includes employees’ taking advantage of their access to sensitive customer information and hospital information. It can include scams and unauthorised discounts, identity theft, and other payment fraud types.
External fraud can involve guests. It can also be from other parties, like the outsider scams that Airbnb faces.
5. Money fraud / counterfeit cash
Money fraud is another form of customer fraud. In such cases, guests use illegal payment techniques like counterfeit bills or bad cheques.
6. Payment card crime
From swiping at the hotel restaurant or bar to the boutiques, casinos and checkouts, card use is high in the hospitality industry. So, tracking credit card crime is essential for hospitality asset protection.
Both employees and guests can be guilty of credit card crimes using skimming devices.
7. Coupon fraud
Another type of payment fraud is when people exploit coupons or discounts. For example, customers subscribing with different emails to receive multiple coupons to use at your restaurant. Or, a waiter keeps 10% from a customer payment even though the customer was unaware of any discounts.
8. Trespassing
It may seem futile to report or track people hanging around your property. But, tracking and reporting trespassing is a brilliant hotel loss prevention method. Ban people who have committed previous offences to prevent them from repeating crimes at your hotel.
9. Vandalism / nuisance
Vandalism is intentional damage to your property. Tracking incidents of vandalism is important for hotel asset protection. For example, if you can identify that in many cases trespassers or loiterers cause damage to your building, you can address trespassing to prevent vandalism.
10. Insolvency
Your hotel is insolvent if it is unable to make debt payments. It is a financial condition, unlike bankruptcy, which is a legal debt condition. Insolvency itself is not a crime, but actions taken by an insolvent can be criminal like:
- Continuing to trade
- Not accounting to legal entities regarding insolvency
11. Drug detection
Your hotel ought to abide by all laws of the country in which it operates, including monitoring drug use and possession and prohibiting it where necessary. The legal repercussions of failing to do this can detriment your brand and ability to operate.
12. Problem situations
Similarly, it’s also important to report, track and follow up on incidents of harassment and violence including:
- Sexual assault and violence
- Verbal threats and assaults
- Physical violence including excessive use of force by security officials
- Discrimination and/or hate speech
Guests expect to feel safe in your space, dealing with harassment incidents is a form of customer protection. On the other hand, you should also back, believe and follow-up on harassment incidents affecting employees.
13. Weapon incidents (firearm incidents & bomb threats)
Incidents involving weaponry like firearms or explosives also have a direct bearing on the safety of your hotel’s occupants. It’s important to understand how a firearm might have gone off and the precautions open to you within the country’s gun law.
With bomb threats, you ought to have a security system in place to detect explosives. If that system fails, be sure to record and unpack the incident to make improvements.
Final Thoughts
Hospitality asset protection and hotel loss prevention can be difficult because there are so many assets to think about: your employees, customers, the building(s), etc. But, tracking crimes can be easy with a good hospitality incident management platform.
If you're looking to implement an incident platform that includes all of this, we've got you covered. Falcony | Observe is easy-to-use, fast to set up, ensures 100% anonymity, has customisable workflows, vast integration possibilities and more. Contact us for more information.
We are building the world's first operational involvement platform. Our mission is to make the process of finding, sharing, fixing and learning from issues and observations as easy as thinking about them and as rewarding as being remembered for them.
By doing this, we are making work more meaningful for all parties involved.
More information at falcony.io.
