Room Division Management: Safety and Security Measures in the Hospitality Industry

This article discusses the importance of safety and security measures in the hospitality industry, especially after recent natural and man-made disasters. It examines the impact of such incidents on legislations and procedures, and compares survey results to determine if safety and security measures and ethical behavior has improved in hospitality venues. The article also includes annotated bibliography and discusses the Paris attack, earthquake in Japan, and the impact of these incidents on legislations and procedures.

Running head: Room Division Management
Room Division Management
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Introduction
The Hospitality industry has emerged as one of the most important industries of the
recent times and on an annual basis contributes more than trillions of dollars to the world
economy. Thus, within a very short time the industry has become the backbone of the
economy of several nations of the world. In the present times it is generally seen that the
focus of the majority of the nations of the world is on the development of this particular
industry with the objective to stabilize their dwindling economy. However, in the present
times safety has emerged as one of the most common concerns which this particular industry
is facing at the current moment. The various manmade disasters like terrorists activities as
well as the natural disasters like earthquakes, landslides, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and
others have impacted the tourism industry in an adverse manner and it is generally seen that
the tourists do not like to visit the tourist destinations which are the hosts to recurrent natural
as well as manmade disasters. Thus, it would be apt to say that safety and stable environment
are the two key requirements of this particular industry.
Tourism industry and disasters
The recent manmade as well as the natural disasters have made it imperative for the
various organizations associated with the hospitality industry to take various kinds of
precautionary measures so that the safety as well as the personal wellbeing of the tourists is
safeguarded. However, the recently conducted Asia Pacific Survey shows that around 50% of
the Hoteliers have not increased their investments regarding ensuring the safety of the tourists
even after the 9/11 and other kinds of manmade and natural disasters (Hotel-online.com
2018). The end result of this particular act on the part of the Hoteliers is the fact that it has
adversely affected the tourism industry in the recent times in addition to the net decrease in
the number of tourists which frequent some of the most popular locations of the world. Some

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of the most popular disasters which have adversely affected the tourism industry are the 9/11
USA attack, the Bali bombing, the earthquakes of Japan, Tsunami among others. Therefore,
there is a growing urge on the part of the hospitality industry as well as the tourists who take
the help of the services offered by them to ensure the safety of the tourists by enhancing the
safety measures. This is not only likely to enhance the quality of the services provided by
these organizations to the tourists who take the help of the services provided by them to the
tourists but at the same time is likely to help them to attract more tourists to the services
offered by them.
Paris Attack
On November 13th, 2015 a series of coordinated terrorist attacks were carried out in
Paris, France. The attack started at 9:16 pm Central European Time, with three suicide
bombers striking during a football match at Stade de France in Saint Denis. This attack was
followed by several mass shootouts and another suicide bombing in many restaurants and
café’s. The terrorists then attacked the Bataclan Theater where the band ‘Eagles of Death
Metal’ were performing and the terrorists took hostages there, which later resulted in a
confrontation with the police. A total of 130 people were killed by the terrorists and 413 were
injured due to the attack (100 of them serious injuries) (Callimachi 2015; Bigo et al 2015;
Haug 2015; Castanho 2018.).
Earthquake in Japan
On 2011, a massive earthquake hit the pacific coast of Tohoku in Japan at 2:46pm
Japan Standard Time on March 11th. The earthquake had a magnitude of 9.1 on the
richterscale with an epicenter of 70 km and hypocenter of 29km, and was the most powerful
earthquake to hit the country, and the 4th most powerful in the world, since 1900. The
earthquake created tsunami waves that were about 40 m tall and travelled 10km inland, and

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shifted the island of Honshu by 2.4m and the earth’s axis by about 10-25cm. The disaster
caused 15,985 deaths, 6,165 injuries and 2,539 people to go missing. 228,863 people were
reported to be displaced by the incident, 121,776 buildings were declared to be totally
collapsed, 280,923 half collapsed and 726,574 partially damaged. The tsunami also caused
level 3 meltdowns of three nuclear reactors in Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (Fujii
et al. 2011; Mori et al. 2011; Bassett et al., 2016).
Impact of these incidents on legislations and procedures
The recent natural disasters as well as the terrorist attacks have compelled the various
organizations associated with the hospitality industry to rethink about the safety measures
which they have in place for the safety of the tourists with the inherent objective to ensure the
safety of the tourists who avail their services but also to maintain the continuity of their
business. It is a reflection of this particular fact that the various organizations associated with
the hospitality need to follow various safety parameters which were quiet unheard of in the
earlier times. Thus, the various organizations associated with the hospitality industry need to
follow various kinds of PMS systems as well as security intelligence databases to ensure the
safety of the tourists. Furthermore, the article “Safety And Security In The Age Of Global
Tourism” (2011) by the authors Kővári and Zimányi examines the safety and security of
travel and tourism within the travellers and employees. Safety and security issues have been
operated as an essential condition of tourism. The authors argues that safety and security
issues in tourism start from the beginning of the 1950s and in the last two decades in tourism,
there are a lot of issues gained much bigger such as terrorist act, local wars and natural
disasters. Also, he's trying to not only give a theoretical insight the security problems but how
to responses and possible action in the crisis situation due to the security problems in the
tourism destination. After the tragedy 9/11, security has supported a significant change in
order to protect the employees and guests also their belongings as well as the achievements of

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the industry. The article “Early-warning management of regional tourism emergency: a
holistic approach” by the authors Kefan and Jia (2014) was to understand and draw a
parallel between current emergencies imposed on world tourism due to several factors
primarily the terrorism. Lack of holistic coordination was determined as primary aspect for
such situation. This paper utilized the regional tourism emergency response model on the
basis of holistic assessment approach and Bayesian network technology for this purpose and
found that due to several state responsibilities such as synergic response, responsibility and
social values as primary reason for such emergency situation and for explanation, the author
utilized the example of Taiwan situation of 2010.
The terrorist attacks in Paris, France raised significant security concerns for the
country as well as for the European Union, especially under the current situation involving
refugees entering Europe from conflict states. The European Council considered
implementing stricter control and screening of citizen entering or leaving Europe, including
passport checks, systematic screening against a biometric database. Following the incident,
the French government declared a state of emergency to last for 12 days, and affected the
French policies on security and emergency (Bigo et al. 2015; Didier et al. 2015). On 2014,
December, the French Government passed four laws to extend its surveillance abilities,
namely: the Anti-Terrorism law, Military Programming law, National Surveillance law and
Intelligence law. Following the March 11th earthquake, the Japanese government
implemented various legislations and emergency measures to help the victims and to mitigate
the nuclear crisis and also to manage the debris from the disaster undertaking reconstructive
work, and preparing the country for future disasters. The Disaster Response Basic law was
amended on 2012, under which the Central Disaster Management Council proposed the Basic
Disaster management Plan using which Disaster Management Operational Plan was made.
Also, Local Disaster management Plan was adopted at the municipal levels.

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Comparison with survey results to determine if safety and security measures and ethical
behavior has improved in hospitality venues, or if the status quo remains
Even after the implementation of the legal policies, several incidents of violence have
occurred in France since 2016. These attacks have resulted in approximately: 484 injuries
and 107 deaths. On January 1st, 2016, 2 people were injured by vehicle ramming, when a car
was rammed twice on four soldiers, protecting a mosque in Valence, by a man. On January
7th, a jihadist attacked a Paris police station wearing fake explosives. On 13th June, 2 people
were killed (a police officer and his wife) by a jihadist. On 14th July, a Tunisian resident in
France drove a 19 ton truck into a crowd killing 86 people and injuring 434 others. On 19th
July, 4 people were injured by stabbing in a holiday resort by an islamist. On 26th July, two
terrorists attacked a church in Normandy, killing an 85 year old priest. On August 19th, a
rabbi was stabbed, wounding him. On august 30th, a policeman was also wounded by an
islamist. On September 2016, a nurse and a policewoman were injured by stabbing. On
September 4th, two prison officers were wounded by an inmate and 2 more were injured by
another Islamist extremist. On September 8th, a police officer was attacked and wounded in
Essonne. On March 16th, 2017 one person was injured by a letter bomb in the French office of
IMF. On 20th April, an Islamist attacked police officers killing 3. On August 9th, 8 were
injured when a man rammed his vehicle onto soldiers. On October 1st, an ISIS member killed
2 at Marsailles Saint Charles Station. On 23rd March, 2018, a gunman with ISIS affiliation
killed 4 people and injured 15 others in a shootout. On 12th May, 2018, 1 pedestrian was
killed and 4 injured in a knife attack. This shows that the policies and legislatives were
unable to completely prevent these incidents.
Seven years after the disaster earthquake in Japan, the nation still struggles to recover
from the effects and losses. Since the implementation of the legislatures by the Japanese
government, the hospitality and hotel industries in Japan have followed the guidelines, and

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incorporated safety into its business planning. However, disaster of a magnitude brought
upon by an earthquake that large can hardly be prepared for. Statistically, there has been no
other major disaster hitting Japan since the Tohoku 2011 earthquake. With the lack of any
such events it is hard to ascertain the efficacy of the legislatures in the improvement of the
security of the guests in hospitality business, however the implementation of the
recommended guidelines shows that the legal frameworks were successfully followed in
Japan (Delaney 2015).
An online security survey conducted by HOTEL Asia Pacific Magazine and
hospitality technology consultancy Pertlink after the terrorist attacks in Bali shows one in
three hoteliers fear the safety of their properties. According to the editor of Hotel Asia
Pacific, Steve Shellum, there is a lack of commitment by hoteliers towards ensuring the
safety of guests, staff and property. However on the brighter side those investments in hotel
security seignificantly increased in many hotels since the Bali attack, which can be useful to
improve the security in hotels. The survey shows that most hoteliers feel that the security
have improved in the hotel, however, there still is scope for further improvement, as 35.90%
of the respondents in the survey still shows concerns over security. This also implies that the
hoteliers should take more active and committed approach to ensure the safety, and the staff
should also support such actions to ensure their success (Zahra 2015; Berezan et al. 2015).
The survey also shows that 61.54% of hoteliers never increased the security budgets, while
15.38% plans to increase the budget. This shows that a significant 76.32% of hotels are yet to
increase the security budget. Investments have been made in hiring extra security guards
(17.95%), increasing staff training (51.28%) and extra security equipment (30.77). Here it
can be suggested that more investment can be made to hire extra security personnel to ensure
better security.
Annotated bibliography:

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1. Seraphin, H., 2017. Terrorism and tourism in France: the limitations of dark
tourism. Worldwide Hospitality and Tourism Themes, 9(2), pp.187-195.
Seraphin (2017) has the rime purpose of determining the importance of dark tourism
around the recent terrorist attack suffering places and for this purpose included topics such as
dark tourism and terrorism related critical papers in the literature review sections. However,
in the research it was found that people were not interested in spots having recent terrorist
attacks and hence rejected the concept of dark tourism. Hence, in the Paris attack, the
tourism business of France has been affected drastically as terrorism has overpowered the
mindset of tourists more than the tourist destinations.
2. Kubo, T., Yamamoto, T., Mashita, M., Hashimoto, M., Greger, K., Waldichuk, T. and
Matsui, K., 2014. The relationship between community support and resident behavior after
the Tohoku Pacific earthquake: the case of Hitachi City in Ibaraki Prefecture. In Risks and
Conflicts: Local Responses to Natural Disasters (pp. 11-42). Emerald Group Publishing
Limited..
Kubo et al., (2015) undertakes an case study on the city of Hitachi so that the primary
relationship between community support and the behavior of its residents after the major
earthquake of Tohoku pacific region can be understood. For this purpose the authors analyzed
the Japanese natural disaster related prevention regimes, conducted a field survey so that the
city’s natural disaster related prevention procedure can be analyzed. It was seen that during
and after the earthquake the characteristics of their local communities affected residents
behavior during and after the earthquake.
3. Kővári, I. and Zimányi, K., 2011. Safety And Security In The Age Of Global Tourism
(The changing role and conception of Safety and Security in Tourism)

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<http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/104672/files/10_Kovari_Safety_Apstract.pdf>
[Accessed 6 Jun. 2018].
The article examines the safety and security of travel and tourism within the travellers
and employees. Safety and security issues have been operated as an essential condition of
tourism. The authors argues that safety and security issues in tourism start from the beginning
of the 1950s and in the last two decades in tourism, there are a lot of issues gained much
bigger such as terrorist act, local wars and natural disasters. Also, he's trying to not only give
a theoretical insight the security problems but how to responses and possible action in the
crisis situation due to the security problems in the tourism destination. After the tragedy 9/11,
security has supported a significant change in order to protect the employees and guests also
their belongings as well as the achievements of the industry.
4. Kefan, X. and Jia, L., 2014. Early-warning management of regional tourism emergency: a
holistic approach. Kybernetes, 43(3/4), pp.497-512.
The prime purpose of the paper by Kefan and Jia (2014) was to understand and draw a
parallel between current emergencies imposed on world tourism due to several factors
primarily the terrorism. Lack of holistic coordination was determined as primary aspect for
such situation. This paper utilized the regional tourism emergency response model on the
basis of holistic assessment approach and Bayesian network technology for this purpose and
found that due to several state responsibilities such as synergic response, responsibility and
social values as primary reason for such emergency situation and for explanation, the author
utilized the example of Taiwan situation of 2010.
Conclusion

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These studies show that government policies are important to improve preparedness
for different disasters and prevent them. Effective policies can not only ensure overall safety
for the citizens but also ensure framework that can be followed on the event a disaster occurs.
Such guidelines should be followed by the hospitality industry to ensure safety and security
of the clients and guests. Furthermore, there is a need for active initiative on the part of the
various organizations associated with the hospitality industry to actively develop various
policies as well as safety regulations which are likely to ensure the safety of the tourists who
take the help of the services provided by these organizations. However, results show that only
50% of the hoteliers are investing adequate amount of resources in terms of both capital as
well as manpower to ensure the safety of the tourists. Thus, it would be apt to say that there is
a need for change in the hospitality regarding the safety measures adopted by them.

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References:
Bassett, D., Sandwell, D. T., Fialko, Y., & Watts, A. B. 2016. Upper-plate controls on co-
seismic slip in the 2011 magnitude 9.0 Tohoku-oki earthquake. Nature, 531(7592), 92.
Berezan, O., Raab, C., Krishen, A.S. and Love, C., 2015. Loyalty runs deeper than thread
count: An exploratory study of gay guest preferences and hotelier perceptions. Journal of
Travel & Tourism Marketing, 32(8), pp.1034-1050.
Bigo, D., Carrera, S., Guild, E., Guittet, E. P., Jeandesboz, J., Mitsilegas, V., ... & Scherrer,
A. 2015. The EU and its Counter-Terrorism Policies after the Paris Attacks. Liberty and
Security in Europe No. 84, 27 November 2015.
Callimachi, R. (2015). ISIS Claims Responsibility, Calling Paris Attacks’ First of the
Storm’. The New York Times, 14.
Castanho Silva, B., 2018. The (non) impact of the 2015 Paris terrorist attacks on political
attitudes. Personality and social psychology bulletin, 44(6), pp.838-850.
Delaney, A., 2015. Taking the High Ground: The Impact of Public Policy on Rebuilding
Neighborhoods in Coastal Japan after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami.
In Disasters' Impact on Livelihood and Cultural Survival (pp. 63-74). CRC Press LLC.
Didier, B. and Guild, E., 2015. The EU Counter-Terrorism Policy Responses to the Attacks in
Paris. Towards an EU Security and Liberty Agenda. Brussel: CEPS.
Fujii, Y., Satake, K., Sakai, S.I., Shinohara, M. and Kanazawa, T., 2011. Tsunami source of
the 2011 off the Pacific coast of Tohoku Earthquake. Earth, planets and space, 63(7), p.55.
Galli, F., 2015. The Law on Terrorism: The UK, France and Italy Compared. Bruylant.
Haug, C. J. 2015. Report from Paris. New England journal of medicine, 373(27), 2589-2593.

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Hotel-online.com. 2018. 50% of Hoteliers Have Not Increased Investment in Security More
than a Year After the September 11 Attacks / HOTEL Asia Pacific Survey / December 2002.
[online] Available at:
https://www.hotel-online.com/News/PR2002_4th/Dec02_HotelSecurity.html [Accessed 18
Jun. 2018].
Kefan, X. and Jia, L., 2014. Early-warning management of regional tourism emergency: a
holistic approach. Kybernetes, 43(3/4), pp.497-512.
Kővári, I. and Zimányi, K., 2011. Safety And Security In The Age Of Global Tourism (The
changing role and conception of Safety and Security in Tourism)
<http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/104672/files/10_Kovari_Safety_Apstract.pdf>
[Accessed 6 Jun. 2018].
Lasconjarias, G., 2014. ‘Rentrée dans le rang?’France, NATO and the EU, from the Védrine
report to the 2013 French White Paper on national security and defence. Journal of
Transatlantic Studies, 12(4), pp.418-431.
Morakabati, Y., Page, S. J., & Fletcher, J. (2017). Emergency management and tourism
stakeholder responses to crises: A global survey. Journal of Travel Research, 56(3), 299-316.
Mori, N., Takahashi, T., Yasuda, T. and Yanagisawa, H., 2011. Survey of 2011 Tohoku
earthquake tsunami inundation and run‐up. Geophysical research letters, 38(7).
Nail, T., 2016. A tale of two crises: Migration and terrorism after the Paris attacks. Studies in
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Zahra, R., 2015. Bridging the gap between providing hospitable services and ensuring safe
and secure hotel operations: a case study (Master's thesis, University of Malta).

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