Hotel Employees on Strike – Bad News for Business
It’s the news no hotelier wants to hear – union staff have voted to walk out. Not only do you have to find interim help that’s willing to cross picket lines; you have to find guests who are also willing to do so.
A work strike could cost your company more than just dollars. As with the case of the downtown Chicago Sheraton hotel locations facing such a strike the last week of October 2009, staffing shortages could seriously impede your business as usual. In the case of the Sheraton unionized workers, over 1,000 staffers were set to vote on whether to walk. Finding replacement help – adequate replacement help – is a crippling task. What’s more, interim staff have a higher risk associated with them. Because they’re not familiar with your business model, there’s a good chance your guest relations ratings could suffer. Not to mention the variables you can’t control – temporary employee unreliability, theft, and the chance that these employees weren’t vetted properly. Inefficient performance is one thing – guest safety, entirely another.
Of all the risks a hotelier faces, who would have ever considered the risk of a guest tampering with another guest’s room? Yet that’s exactly what happened to 
If you’re relying on a generic commercial general liability insurance policy to cover your hotel business, oh, the gaps you’ve created. Oh sure, the general liability policy is going to cover your building and grounds, but it doesn’t begin to address the specific risks that hotels face. And while many general liability policies give you additional coverages that are useful – such as employer’s liability coverage – it falls far short of giving your hotel business the comprehensive protection that a hotel insurance policy would give you.
Your hotel is most likely in compliance will all federal and state disability statutes, making you believe your compliance has helped you avoid unnecessary lawsuits. Oh, if it were only that simple! Fact is despite the best efforts and intentions of many hotel businesses, hoteliers are being sued for third party risks, such as discrimination, harassment, and in one particularly odd case, emotional distress because the establishment’s disabled parking was inadequate for the patron’s van.
Just ask