Hotel Online  Special
Report

Hotels Near Airports Provide Better Safety and Security
Features According to The Center for Hospitality
Research – Cornell Hotel School 

ITHACA, N.Y. – December 10, 2002 – People who worry about traveling
and spending time in public places may be relieved to learn that most U.S.
hotels are pretty safe places to be, a study by a Cornell University hospitality-industry
expert finds.
Hotels near airports offer the most safety and security features, with
large hotels, luxury hotels of any size and new hotels also ranking high
on the safety and security indexes devised by Cathy Enz, a professor at
Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration, and Masako Taylor,
a Ph.D. candidate at the school.
Enz, who is director of the Hotel School’s Center for Hospitality Research,
said: “A significant proportion of the 2,123 hotels included in our study
rated 85 percent or higher on our indexes, which looked at such features
as security camera monitoring systems, secured corridors, electronic locks
and sprinkler systems. That news is reassuring now that we’re seeing a
heightened concern among the general public about how safe we are in public
buildings, including hotels.”
In general, the newer the hotel, the higher its safety and security
scores, the researchers found. “This is probably because electronic locks,
sprinklers and interior corridors are relatively less common in older hotels
than in hotels built in the last decade,” said Enz. Luxury hotels are the
exception, she noted. “Because they are renovated frequently, even the
oldest ones are likely to have the latest safety and security features.”
Accordingly, after airport hotels, luxury and upscale hotels had the highest
scores for safety and security. All-suite properties and convention hotels
also scored high.
While resorts scored low on the physical safety and security features,
Enz attributed some of that result to customer demands for such amenities
as rooms that open onto balconies overlooking such public areas as pools
or the ocean. “It may be that what we want in a resort, we don’t want in
urban hotel properties,” Enz said.
Motels had the lowest safety and security score, and bed-and-breakfast
properties and condominiums also scored low, most likely because many lack
sprinklers and electronic door locks, Enz commented.
In an earlier survey published in February 2002, Enz found hotel general
managers reported few changes in safety and security measures or added
security staff members following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. “While
no place is immune to danger, taken together the two studies suggest that
hotels had already implemented many of the safety and security features
we found in our new survey and were fairly safe, secure places to begin
with,” said Enz.
Enz and Taylor used data from the 2001 American Hotel & Lodging
Survey prepared by RealTime Hotel Reports, which is part of Smith Travel
Research.  The researchers checked for these five key safety features:
sprinklers, smoke detectors, in-room safety information, safety videos
and security cameras; and these five security features: electronic locks,
interior corridors, security cameras, in-room safety information and a
safety video.  They gave a weighted score for each feature to create
separate safety and security indexes, each with a potential perfect score
of 100 (the features measured are listed above in descending weighted order).
Contact:
The Center for Hospitality Research 
Cornell Hotel School 
http://www.hotelschool.cornell.edu/chr
 (607) 255-9780 
Also See:

Safety
& Security Issues Surrounding MOD Programs / Aug 2002

Safety
and Convenience Issues of Air Travel Continue to Restrain U.S. Lodging
Demand / Nov 2002