Hotel Expert Witness Gut Check on Room and Key Control Procedures

Recent news from a hotel expert witness perspective about a woman being assaulted by a stranger gaining access to her room is a call to check your own procedures. If your hotel must defend itself in a similar lawsuit, how hotel employees are trained and what they did subsequent to and as part of that training will be a key part of whether your operation might be considered to be responsible or not by a jury. According to the particular incident reported in Good Morning America and Yahoo News: “The man later went to the front desk, said that he was Plaintiff’s husband, and obtained a key from hotel staff to her room. The staff did not ask him for any identification or proof that he was in fact Plaintiff’s husband, according to the lawsuit. He then proceeded to her room and tried to molest her. She awoke, grabbed a housecoat, and ran screaming from the room.” Read more here if you are an owner, lawyer or hotel expert witness involved in similar lawsuits. Many hotels these days have electronic and computerized key control systems to minimize duplication and keys being improperly assigned to the wrong guest. There are also other security areas as pointed out in this related article that your hotel management training should consider too. However and regardless of the system you have controlling key access to a guest’s room, the first control point starts at the front desk. Therefore, it is important to insure there are basic procedures that are always followed. In particular and as it concerns requests by someone for a duplicate or secondary key to a room, it should only be given to guests who have identifications that validate that they are in fact one of the person(s) registered to that room. Do your hotel management procedures include specific steps that representatives at the front desk should follow to prevent unauthorized persons from getting keys to rooms that they are not registered in? If you had a similar lawsuit, how would a hotel expert witness determine on your behalf that those procedures were in fact known and followed by the staff? Please share your commentary below.