This is Part 1 in a 6-part series on safety in the hospitality industry.

As an employer, you have a duty of care to ensure that employees are not injured during the course performing the duties of their employment.  It can be tempting to funnel resources into areas where immediate profit is realized. DO NOT make that mistake.

A well run safety management program will not only improve the efficiency of your staff, it will also improve your bottom line by reducing costs.  Injury to an employee can cost you in at least three ways: 

1. Money (uninsured costs)
2. Staff (employees may leave for safer working conditions)
3. Time ( accident investigation, training new staff if lost)

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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.

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Hard to imagine how botox could become a risk to your hotel business, but if a spa operating on your hotel premises is selling botox treatments to your guests, beware. Most hoteliers don’t often connect the dots between their hotel business and the businesses of those vendors who have set up shop on hotel property. But botox, laser treatments, even nail salons doing business independent of your hotel business pose an exposure to lawsuits to your hotel.

With more amenities being heaped on guests and more hotels eager to partner with guest service providers in an attempt to woo said guests, the risks of such partnerships are often overlooked. Service providers such as spas, hair salons, personal trainers, medical services come with their own sets of risks, including the risk to the health and safety of your guests. Consider that if your hotel brochures or in-room promotions of either your establishment or that of the vendors is presented to your guests as additional services, you face liability for nearly any claim waged against the vendors.

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No one needs to tell you the changing nature of the hotel industry. Between government regulatory change and health and safety issues, it’s all you can do to stay ahead of an evolving, growing industry. So how do you think that hotel insurance policy package you bought is doing?

 If it’s been more than a few years since you purchased your hotel insurance package, it’s almost a given that something in your current business practices is not covered by that insurance package. But how can you know? Read the rest of this entry »

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Flickr photo credit: Quiplash!

Let’s just say when it comes to swine flu (or the more politically correct term, H1N1), the nation, so far, has dodged a rather large, frightening bullet. True, the strain that seems to have hit this country was mild in comparison to neighboring Mexico, there were still deaths, still travel advisories, and still the looming threat that this pandemic could evolve to catastrophic proportions.

As hoteliers, many of us weren’t ready for it. That’s not to say we weren’t covered for the lack of occupancy – we’d not be very good at our jobs if we didn’t mitigate the loss in traveler dollars. But were we prepared – are we prepared – for handling a pandemic within our own establishments?

While we did have our risk controls in place for such outbreaks as Legionnaire’s disease (you did do that much, didn’t you?), our readiness for a pandemic that could strip our occupancy levels to zero was pretty lame. As with any loss, the risk lies in our lack of planning for it. Thanks to Legionnaire’s disease, many hotels have controls in place to handle such pandemics from an occupancy standpoint. But the further from the events we are, the more lax we become in our oversight. Most of us who remember the first Legionnaire’s outbreak (1976) don’t realize the most recent confirmed outbreak was 2002 in the UK. Read the rest of this entry »

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