Security in Asia - To Disturb or not to Disturb...

At the recent IT&CMA travel show and exhibition which took place in Bangkok from 23 - 25 October, we had the opportunity to ask hoteliers both at a corporate and individual property level, what they were doing about security following recent warnings that different countries in Asia were now, new, potential targets for terrorists. 

While security on a governmental level has been stepped up considerably with more police both in uniform and undercover being posted to tourist areas, and tighter immigration controls etc throughout Asia. 

The message we received from hotels was less encouraging with many saying that their security was already very tight, and that there was only so much that can be done. Most, especially the large international hotel companies have extremely good reactionary procedures in place, where everyone from the housekeeping department and up, know how to handle and manage different emergencies within the building.

The question after the Bali bombing though, has to be whether reactionary procedures are sufficient, and should we not be reviewing our security to ensure that enough precautionary and preventative measures are in place to ensure that our establishment whether it be a hotel, bar, shopping centre or whatever is as difficult a target as possible.

It is at this stage we fall into a problem, where many hotels fear that if they step up security with preventative measures such as metal detectors on the door, bag checks for every person entering, extreme monitoring of cars in the car park and in close proximity to the building, that they may actually be frightening people away and consequently lose business.

We asked a major International Hotel in Bangkok whether their popular bar had stepped up security to ensure, as much as possible, the security of their guests. The response we received was that security was already very tight, but implementing bag checks, metal detectors etc would give the wrong message and would inconvenience guests. We asked whether any market research had been done by this hotel or by their corporate office to see whether their guests would actually prefer additional inconvenience if it meant that they were possibly in a safer environment (read some readers comments). After all in today's uncertain world wouldn't you prefer to go to a hotel, bar, restaurant which had implemented additional security that was visible, rather than one that was at least on the surface not doing as much ? Most people we have spoken to said they would prefer the inconvenience. Please take our security poll.

Bali came as a shock to us all, who would never have thought that this idyllic tourist destination would be home to such horror. What we need to do is learn from this massacre, it is far too easy for the travel industry to moan about how unjust travel advisories etc are, how our own countries are safe, and how it will never happen 'here' - but wait isn't that what we thought about Bali ?

Granted travel advisories are damaging, and their fairness or bias needs to be addressed, but they are a separate problem to the question of preventative security measures. Ultimately we can only pray that such a tragedy will never take place where 'we' are, what however we will never be able to say is that we were not warned.

Whether these warnings are exaggerated, precautionary, or fact is of little importance, and ultimately only time will tell, what the travel industry needs to do though, is heed these warnings and fight them by telling the guests that we care about your security, about our staffs security and our own.

As an industry we need to look more deeply into the question of security and analyse whether it is time to disturb guests if that means increasing their own safety. After all where would we be without clients ?

Thoughts and comments should be sent to the Editor