Security Guards for Hotels

A post built around the hours the front office is thin

A hotel is a building that is fully open and mostly asleep at the same time. From late evening until the breakfast service, the night auditor is often the only employee in the public areas, and every call from a guest floor, every stranger in the lobby and every sound from the garage lands on that one person. Price Protection sets hotels up with an overnight lobby post for exactly that window, and where occupancy or the bar calls for it, an evening post that starts when the restaurant seats its last table. The officer is visible at the desk, moves on a schedule and comes back, so the lobby is never left to the phone.

Post orders are written with the general manager and the front office manager before the first night. They record the hotel’s hours for the pool, the fitness room and the bar, the rule for visitors on guest floors, how the desk verifies a guest without a key, where the manager on duty can be reached, what the hotel does for a guest in medical trouble, and how a trespass warning is issued on the hotel’s behalf. Room-level decisions stay with the hotel; the officer carries them out and records them.

Guest floors, the garage and the pool deck

The three places a hotel loses control at night are the corridors, the garage and the pool. Corridors are where noise, uninvited visitors and room parties happen, and an officer walking them on an irregular schedule, quiet and in uniform, is what stops most of it before the desk has to call anyone. The garage is where the vehicles are, and vehicle break-ins are the loss a hotel hears about at checkout. Rounds through every level, with a note of open windows, people in parked cars and lights that are out, are the answer. The pool is where a conference group or a wedding block goes after the bar closes; the gate gets locked at the posted hour and checked every round afterward.

Working with the front desk and the manager on duty

The officer works from the desk, not apart from it. The night auditor knows which rooms have complained and which guests are expected late; the officer knows what is happening on the floors and in the lot. Between them they cover the building. Anything the officer does on a guest floor is reported to the desk so it goes on the guest’s file, and anything the desk hears from a guest that needs someone to go up is handed to the officer. The manager on duty is called for the decisions the post orders reserve for the hotel: moving a room, refunding a guest, evicting a guest, calling police for something short of an emergency.

When the sprinklers or the alarm panel are out of service

Hotels renovate with guests in the building, and a sprinkler zone or the alarm panel goes down for days at a time. Under the fire code the fire department and the fire code official are notified, and where the official requires it, a fire watch runs until the system is restored. Price Protection staffs hotel fire watches with logged rounds through every floor and the mechanical spaces, and the same officer group can hold the security post, so the hotel is not briefing two companies. The insight on fire watch during hotel sprinkler repairs explains how the two posts fit together.

Getting a hotel post started

Dispatch needs the property address, the number of rooms and floors, whether there is a garage and a bar, the hours wanted, a copy of the hotel’s visitor and pool policies and a contact for the walk-through. Unarmed coverage can usually begin within hours of the request when a hotel has an immediate problem, with the post orders finished on the first walk-through and refined over the first week. Hotels that only need cover for a conference block, a wedding weekend or the rodeo can book those nights as a temporary post.