Hotels are often advertised as our homes away from home. Whether you’re staying at a hotel for a family vacation, work retreat or just for a quick weekend getaway your hotel room becomes your home.
Traditionally, home is seen as a safe place where you’re often shielded from the craziness of the world. But when it comes to hotels, how safe are you?
After the Oct. 1st Mandalay Bay Hotel shooting where a man shot and killed 59 people and injured hundreds from his hotel room window, many hotels have had to take an in-depth look at their security measures.
How could a man get multiple firearms into his room for days and no one, including housekeeping, was aware? Should hotels have security checkpoints like at airports? Post-massacre many hotels upped security to assure guest safety. Some large hotel chains discussed the possibilities of enacting airport-like security at check-in.
“I think it’s a percussion that can be seamlessly integrated into hotels….I’ve already got to check in, you might as well check my bag while I’m doing that," said Wynton Harvey, an avid traveler.
But for some, it’s an unnecessary step in a more significant issue.
“It’s an invasion of privacy. It’s not the hotel's job to look for those things. [The shooter] shouldn’t have been able to get all those guns,” said Brittasia Whaley, who travels to D.C. to visit her sister.
“At what point do we decide it's not the individual places that need security, it’s the people who get the guns….there can be a shooting anywhere,” Whaley said.
“This Vegas shooting was the first of its kind, more often then not people should feel safe at their hotels, extreme things happen all the time, we shouldn’t change the way we live because one person decided to step out of the realm” said Lindsay Marshall, a hotel manager at Disney’s Polynesian Village Resort in Orlando, Florida.
“At my hotel, security has a watchful eye on most guests, if things look or seem suspicious they look into it, most of the time staff doesn’t know, and the guest certainly don’t know either,” Marshall said.
“If the hotel is doing their job, everyone and everything should be safe without the additional security checkpoints,” said Marshall.
While hotels have the right to secure their guest the best way they see fit, hotel guest Wynton Harvey reminds us, no matter where you go and where you stay, a hotel's primary purpose is to be a place where you can safely lay your head at night.
“When I’m on vacation the last thing I want to think about is my safety in my hotel room. It’s supposed to be my home for the night.”
