On the day that survivors of the 2015 Imperial Marhaba hotel attack in Tunisia gave their evidence to an inquest into the deaths of the 30 Britons, venuefinder.com's reporter Mike Fletcher met up with the Global Head of Security for Hyatt Hotels, Mark Sanna to discuss how Hyatt’s 679 properties around the world ensure the safety of both business travellers and event delegates.
From your experience, and in your professional opinion, do you believe anything could have been done differently, which may have prevented the gunman walking onto the hotel’s Sousse beach in June 2015 with an AK47 assault rifle hidden in a parasol?
In that particular case, I believe there was a lack of information sharing between government assets, tourism bodies and hotel security teams. At Hyatt, we take a very proactive approach to intelligence sharing in order to enable each property to have the very best understanding of the threat environment.
Where does Hyatt’s security intelligence come from?
We source it from a wide range of service providers, municipal law enforcement agencies and collaborative groups. I sit on the chair committee of the Overseas Security Advisory Council’s working group on hotel security, where we share intelligence with eight other major hotel groups.
Is terrorism the main security threat to hotels around the world currently?
We have to assess all types of security threats with shared intelligence and information that’s bespoke to certain regions or cities, as well as individual events or guests who have booked into one of our properties.
We analyse everything from health risks such as the Zika virus outbreak to hotel vulnerabilities, which may be open to cyber terrorism. We gain a shared understanding of each business client in order to determine any likely threat, and we study the operating environment for each property so that we can protect guests, both inside the hotel but also when their conference or event takes them into the city or surrounding area.
What response procedures does Hyatt have in place should a major incident occur?
Across the Hyatt global portfolio, we have eight standard emergency response plans in place that range from evacuation to shelter and protect. These cover every crisis management eventuality from extreme weather to bomb threats to medical emergencies. We understand that event management agencies generally won’t have their own security deployment, so no matter the size of the event or the details of the itinerary, we are able to make recommendations, provide assessments and inform organisers of our procedures in place to respond.
We want every event to be a success and we have a duty of care to all guests, both when they’re within the hotel and when they’re off-site. So we don’t just give you a 50-page security document that you’ll never read. We provide simple steps and information for each emergency response so that organisers understand what will happen in any given scenario.
How do you work with agencies who do deploy their own security?
We have an event planning team in each property who collaborate with everyone from Betty’s Cookies sales meeting for 12 people to large pharmaceutical company conferences, through to presidential or protected person arrivals, or the hosting of high-profile sporting teams.
For us, the common thread is who the guests are and what is the associated threat intelligence. For President Trump for example, we already know the requirements of the Secret Service and how they want things done, so we simply become the support and the enabler of their security protocols.
I understand President Trump would often stay at Hyatt during his US election campaign?
That’s correct. His knowledge and experience of hotel operating procedures makes him an easy guest to host and protect. It’s worth remembering though, should anything happen during a President’s stay, Secret Service will always vaporise with their client according to our evacuation procedures. We, on the other hand have to remain in place to ensure that every other hotel guest is safe and secure.
Do you think Tunisia’s business tourism industry will ever recover from the June 2015 terror attack?
Major destinations can be dramatically impacted for a very long time after something like that. They need to show resilience just as London’s convention bureau did after the 2005 tube bombings and India’s tourism agency showed after the 2008 Mumbai attacks. Even Paris has formed a resilience office to develop strategy that will grow business tourism in the wake of its recent troubles. Tunisia must now do the same. DMCs and Convention Bureaux often have the skill-sets and capabilities to get a destination back on its feet, but it’ll take time.
Article written by Mike Fletcher