Exclusive Feature: Last week I attended the 29th Deloitte European Hotel Investment conference: The header of the conference was 'Heading into Thin Air?'; this conference was attended by 400 investors, owners and senior executives of the global lodging industry and ahead of the conference, the invitees were asked to answer a short survey and one of the questions was: What are the five key risks to the European hotel industry in the next 5 years?

Well… 67% of the people who answered the survey believe that the highest risk to the European hotel industry are terrorist attacks.

In the 2nd. place with 50% is the lack of economic growth.

Let me remind you, that this survey was conducted amongst senior and seasoned hospitality professionals. If this is the answer we get from people within the industry, what do our guests think?

A couple of weeks ago, we all watched on TV a seriously deranged person, taking a suite at a large Las-Vegas hotel, bringing into his suite a huge arsenal of Automatic weapons and thousands of rounds and shooting from his hotel window murdering 58 people and wounding hundreds of innocent people.

I am sure that questions are asked and will be asked about how no one noticed the vast number of arms in in the suite. No one controlled the duffel bags that were used to carry the guns and ammunition from the car into the suite.

Can an incident like that happen in a hotel in a European country? I seriously doubt it. It’s not because European hotels have better security. They don’t. It’s because gun control regulations in Europe are much tighter.

What can happen? Let me go trough a few simple scenarios. A suicide bomber walking in a hotel lobby – lounge or a ballroom exploding him/herself.

A bomber driving a truck laden with explosives or an empty truck into a hotel’s lobby.

These are just a few simple but deadly examples.

Let’s look at what happened in Africa not too long ago - a Hotel in Mogadishu Somalia was the scene of a deadly terrorist attack. That was the “work” of one of the radical Islamist terror groups.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/28/mogadishu-people-dead-car-bomb-outside-somalia-hotel

So, you might say that Mogadishu isn’t London, Paris, Berlin, Brussels or Istanbul, but let me remind you that the war against ISIS in Iraq and Syria is almost over. Hundreds of European Jihadi warriors are retiring to their home countries with the crazy ideas that drove them in the first place to go and fight a “Holy War” against the infidels in Iraq, Syria and Libya.

We should be extremely vigilant and invest funds addressing the potential risk. The Maslow Pyramid puts security at the base of the Pyramid.

“Security of body, of employment, of resources, of morality, of the family, of health, of property”

For those of you who forgot the pyramid structure from your study days, recall that security needs come before the social needs and Esteem needs.

Back in January 2015, I wrote the following article titled:
“Better Safe than Sorry - Hotels in Major European Cities Need to be Vigilant and Ready”

Europe hasn’t become safer since the date of this writing almost two years ago – in fact, it’s quite the opposite. Don’t be an ostrich and bury your head in the sand and let’s talk about the threats to professional forums and conferences.

Our guests will accept heightened hotel security checks once we explain to them that this is done for their own safety. They got used to airport security checks, so there’s no reason they shouldn’t accept tighter hotel security.

We should never forget that we owe this to our guests.

Joseph Fischer is the CEO of Vision Hospitality & Travel - An international lodging & hospitality consulting firm. He is a veteran hotelier with over 30 years of extensive management experience in the global lodging Industry.

A strategic “out-of-the-box” thinker, visionary, with plenty of tangible and ready-to-be-implemented ideas. Joseph is a frequent contributing writer on 4Hoteliers.com global new portal.

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