Safety And Security And The Hospitality Industry Tourism Essay

Introduction and Background of the Study

Safety and security plays a big role in this century. Everyone is concerning about their safety and security when they are staying in the hotel during vacation. In the worldwide hotel industry, the management too concern about safety and security issues pertaining on their guests and employees.

In the hospitality industry, they are proud of themselves because they are known friendly to everyone in such way of attitude in welcoming their customers or guests. Therefore, they should practice and maintain the concept of a “home-from-home” with their “open-door” approach with comfort, convenience and privacy to their guests (Gill, Moon, Seaman & Turbin, 2002).

After the disasters such as terrorist attack at Luxor Egypt in 1992 and 1993, 852 passengers died on the shipwreck of Estonia in Baltic Sea on 28th September 1994, Iraq war terror attack of September 11, 2001 in New York, United States, the SARS epidemic in 2003, Tsunami disaster on 26th December 2004 in Thailand and Bali bombings, the need for safety and security around the world is growing and the topic of safety and security has become a popular discussion among the people in the world. Besides, most of the hotels have now implemented a safety and security plan as well as quality plan such as providing training for the employees and guest’s safety and security (Steene, 2009, Lockyer, 2007 and Helena & Natasa, 2010).

The hotel management has separated the hotel safety into two broad categories which are safety and security. The management categorized safety as in the services provided, also included the construction of the hotel interior designed whereby making sure they are safe built for the employees to work in and in-house guests. However, security in hotel related to threats that set by people than setting by the physical surroundings, which means it depends on the person who set the security danger that cannot be predict (Policy Department, 2008).

Based on Enz (2009) personal definition on safety and security, she defined safety as protecting guest’s safety, while keeping guests’ property safe will be included in the security definition. In other words, according to Enz and Masako (2002), safety involves in protecting employees and guests while in the hotel area from serious injured and death.

In terms of safety, it can be further categorized by various aspects such as fire safety and others aspects of hotel safety. As for hotel safety, it includes food safety, swimming pool safety and not forgetting the hotel’s property safety such as crime safety (Policy Department, 2008).

Problem Statements

Training safety and security measures is important to the hospitality industry whereby without the important of measures, the hospitality and tourim industry will not have boom so fast. This is because everyone take their life as precious as gold. Unfortunately nowaday, hotels only used of the tecnology safety and security system to protect their guest. They should have also used of training method and procedures to train their employees and educate guest as a precautions for accidents to happen. Morever, the hospitality should be more concern on which aspects that will have a high rate of accidents happen in the daily rountine. However, why training is crucial for the hospitality industry to look upon on? What are the ways that the hospitality industry able to use to train their employees and guests to keep safe from danger? Which aspects must they concerned on?

Research Objectives

The intention of this research is done to determine employee safety and security training and education for guests do helps to minimize the safety and security issues in the hospitality industry. This research is carried out to achieve several objectives in the following below:

To determined the importance of training safety and security.

To determined the ways that the hotels implement to train their employees and educate guests on safety and security to feel secure and comfortable while in the hotel.

To identify the factors that the hotels will look into concern and train employees and educate guest to prevent these issues to happen.

Research Questions

This study is attempted answer the research questions in the following below:

Why it is importance of training safety and security?

What are the ways that the hotel implements to train their employees and educate their guests on the safety and security?

What are the factors that the hotels will look into concern and train employees and educate guest to prevent these issues to happen?

Hypothesis Statement

The hypothesis in this research will be done based on the value of the population which the hypothesis statement will be related to the importance of training safety and security does lower the percentage of safety and security issues. In this hypothesis research, the author has used a statement which will give less bad effect on the result.

Ho = There is no significance between the importance of training safety and security will lower the percentage of safety and security and have no effect on safety and security issues.

H1 = There is a significance between the importance of training safety and security will lower the percentage of safety and security and have no effect on safety and security issues.

Theoretical and Conceptual Framework

The importance of training safety and security on employees and guests

Importance of training safety and security

Training the employees on safety and security

Ways and factors to concerned on

Fire safety

Accident and private safety

Educating guests on safety and security

Crime safety and security

Figure 1.1 A conceptual framework on the importance of training safety and security on employees and guests in the hotel industry.

Basically the above figure shows about this research will be focusing on several facts and facts such as the aspects that the hotel should be more concerned on by implementing ways to protect them. Before the author determined the aspects and ways on protecting the employees and guest’s safety, the author would like to explain on the importance of training safety and security on employees and guests and not just relying on the safety and security features such as CCTV and others more.

As for the aspects for the hotel to be concerned on will be the fire safety, accident and private safety and crime safety and security. These aspects should be concerned on because they will happen in our daily life. Fire is a phenomena aspect which we cannot predict to happen, thus it is important for the hospitality to train the employees and guests on ways to overcome it when it happens. As for accidents and private safety, if the employees and guest are teach to prevent them to happen, the rate of accidents will be lower down. For example, housekeepers should be trained in a right way to clean the room with safety measures. Crime happens almost every day in our life, thus the hotel should also take in precautions even though there are security police and officers. For example, the hotel needs to train employees on ways to not fall into the criminal traps when they suspected suspicious people wondering in the hotels.

Significance of the Study

Training employees and educate in-house guests in order to keep themselves safe and secure is a very important elements in the hospitality and tourism industry nowadays. With the training of safety and security, they will reach the employees and guest’s satisfaction where they will feel safe just like they are in their own house. In the mean time, it will also increase the attention from the outsiders and travelers if they know the hotel manage well in safety and security matters, thus this will brings benefits to the hotel when they need more manpower and increase the economy and status of the hotel.

The author had recognized the types of training methods for employees and guests to follow to overcome the negative factors which will make them feel safer while being in the hotel at anytime and anywhere. Moreover, the effects of these method used will minimize the safety and security issues. This research will help the organizations in the hospitality industry to understand the purpose of training safety and security will benefit the employees and travelers. This will also benefit the hotel as they practice and applying on the employees and guests to manage and improve the safety and security measures.

Scope and Limitation

Basically, this research is mainly focusing on the method that the hotel’s management uses to train their employees and educates their in-house guests in order to keep them safe and secure, also help to reduce negative issues that will happened in the hotel and the surrounding. Hotels keep them safe and secure in terms of avoiding injuries and death on the employees and guests when there are accidents, crime and fire.

However, there are several limitations related to this study have occurred in order to complete this research successfully. Firstly, it will be the availability to search for secondary data, the electronic sources. The author has faced some difficulties in searching additional information and electronic articles and journals from the websites that related to training safety and security for employees and educating guests when being in the hotel. Even though, the respective college university has provided several sources for the author like academic websites but there are still lack of sources for the author to collect more information because some of the journals and information need to be purchased before consume. Moreover, the author had faced some challenges because of lacking experience and knowledge in conducting a proposal. It is a great challenge when the author does not have sufficient experience and the skills to collect strong and good data for this research.

CHAPTER TWO

LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Introduction

In this chapter, it will contains the finding of the authors had done research regarding on the important of training the employees and educate the guests, also several ways to train the employees and educate guests to keep safe while they are in the hotel. Besides, it will also include the factors where the hotel will be more concern on and avoid injuries happened. As for the previous researcher’s findings and theories, they will be used as supporting information also ensuring that the methods and factors will be focusing on will help in this research. Moreover, all information and data that have been gathered for this research are from various secondary data sources such as electronic articles and journals.

2.2 Importance of training for safety and security

The word “training” is means by giving a person the actual and enough information to him or her needed in order to work safely. It is not crucial that training need to have a formal class session or seminars and courses for the employees to attend.

In this generation, there are various aspects that make the hotel successful whereby these aspects are health, safety and sustainability of the attractions business (Williams 2008). According to Pitt (2007), in United Kingdom, there are about more than 30 million of working days lost in each year due to employee’s health sickness and seven million are because of employee injured in the working place. Every year, there are more than a million of employees suffering from bully while working by their own colleagues or public. Therefore, in order to reduce the number of workplace injury and others factors, training employees and guests to keep themselves safe while working and staying in the hotel are crucial.

Based on the research by Health and Safety in the Catering Industry Liaison Committee, there is a legal law to provide information and training regarding to health and safety aspects to all employees who are needed (http://www.hse.gov.uk).

2.3 Training employees

Weitze (2008) noted that if the hotel management is lacking of employees training, lack of maintaining the policies and procedures and lastly lacking of prevention, these will all lead to a safety related incident. Thus, it is important to train the employees from the hotel itself first before to educate the guests.

Moreover, the staffs of Shangri-la Hotel are the first people who will interact with the guests once they step into the hotel. It does not matter they are from which department of the hotel, as long they are Shangri-la Hotel employees such as bell boy, front desk staffs, housekeepers and more, the employees are responsible to create a culture of safety and professionalism to keep themselves safe and keeping the guest safety and security as well (Kwiecinski, 2010). Therefore, it is crucial for the management to train every employee to be able to face to face in any accidents such as fire, police and other emergency services people so that they may help out if that is a need (William, 2008). Based on a health and safety manager, Duncan Aspin, he had stated that managers need to shape up health and safety training policy for ensuring every employee have sufficient training on safety and security issues to reduce accident (Mottram, 2005).

For an example, according to Mottram (2005), providing program regarding on staff development and safety training has given a hand to North-West division of Birse Civil to achieve zero percent accident rate, which is also the top 1 company in UK as construction industry for safety. Therefore, training employees not only will help to save their lives but also help Shangri-la Hotel to rise up hotel status.

2.4 Educating guests

Besides Shangri-la Hotel train their employees to keep themselves safe and implementing safety and security features for the guest safety, it is also important for them to train their in-house guests to take care of themselves as well. In general, everyone who travels around and look for accommodations would expect they will be safe and their property will be secure leaving them in the hotel while they are out for travel. However, sometimes it is hard to predict that guest will be safe by just depending on the hotel’s safety and security features, thus the guests should also learn how to protect themselves away from crimes, accidents and fire.

According to the research by Mottram (2005), in the year of 2003, 80 people who include the guests and employees of Birse Civils have attended the safety management and courses. In result, the company has recorded as zero accidents occur within the company area.

2.5 Ways and factors that will be concerned on

2.5.1 Fire Safety

Fire accident is an accident whereby we cannot predict when to happen and when not to happen. Even if there is a fire, the guests might not know how to handle because they are not aware of it. Therefore, the hotel management should take precautions on handling the safety of their employees and guests. For example, sometimes foreign in-house guests might have slow respond to the evacuation alarms when it rings because they do not have an understanding situation in the local hotel (Roberts & Chan, 2000).

According to Helena & Natasa (2010), in order to protect guest safety, the management of the hotel needs to educate guest by providing instructions, labels and reminders which related to fire preventions. The purpose of implement this so that guests will not be panic and nervous when there is fire accident, in fact they will stay calm and know the way to leave the hotel building safely.

Throughout the research, as for the fire precautions to protect the guest and employees safety, Shareton Hotel did the best in training their employees to handle fire incident in order to save their life and the guest life too. They provide full induction and training for all hotel staffs on working safe procedures and responses which relate to fire. Besides, new personnel will be trained to use types of extinguishers and taught them ways to handle when the hotel is on fire (Roberts & Chan, 2000).

2.5.2 Accidents and Private Safety

In the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA), it has stated in 1970 that each working people either man or woman in the nation need to have a safe and healthful working conditions which also means that without having any injuries during the working period (Hobson, 1996). In the hospitality industry, it is important for the hoteliers to look into this aspect because accident can happen in the hotel easily at anytime and anywhere on the employees and guests.

In the research by Mottram (2005), the company of Birse Civils does provide training to their employees which included first-aid training. This training is to ensure that their employees are qualified to the Health and Safety Regulation 1981, which need four days training at St John Ambulance premises. Thus, as for all hospitality industry, the management should provide training like this as a protection to their employees and guests safety.

In addition, in certain time, housekeeping department has a high percentage of causing accidents when the housekeepers do not handled dangerous chemicals in a proper way and practicing unhealthy poses while cleaning the rooms. Due to they are dealing with dangerous hazardous chemicals which will affect their health and life, safety and security training and orientation are important and should be practice in the housekeeping department even though the housekeepers did not handle any machinery. As an example, Wyswert hotel does provide training and information for the housekeepers on what they are supposed and not supposed to do (Kristanti & Kuhn, 2005).

However, sometimes it is a part of the employee’s jobs to protect the in-house guest’s safety. Leong (2000) has stated that the entire employees need to be trained so that they know about the security procedures to follow on which will be helpful for the guests. Thus, training employees is important especially when the front desks agent is dealing with the arrival guest’s room key. According to Kristanti & Kuhn (2005) and Woods, Ninemeier, Hayes & Austin (2007), they have mentioned that front desk agents are not allowed to give out keys, room numbers, messages and mail to anyone from the requester without the owner’s of the room real identity. Also, during the process when the front desk agent passes the room key to the guest, they should not announce the guest’s room number out in the public.

In addition, restaurant staffs also play a role in keeping the guests safety and security whereby they need to keep their customers property in secure when they are having their meals in the respective restaurant. The restaurant manager needs to train the server to be more alert on the customer belongings (Kristanti & Kuhn, 2005).

2.5.3 Crime Safety and Security

Nowadays, violent crime in the workplace has become a world issue that everyone will concern. Therefore, it is now has become a problem to the hospitality industry that they will be facing and this problem is increasing in other countries (Hobson, 1996). After the incident of a popular singer was raped with a knife pointed at her in Long Island motel, the issues of security become a serious issue to all hotels in the United States (Leong, 2000). Therefore, hotels have aware of crime issues and security system and start practicing crime management (Gill, Moon, Seaman & Turbin, 2002). Crime in the workplace has generally separated into different categories such as robbery and other commercial crimes, employer or other employee direct situations and terrorism.

In order to minimize the rate of violence crime in the hospitality industry, the management can strengthen the manager and supervisors security skills and ways to use first aids. It is important for both of them to be expert in managing these securities because they are the one will handle the problems when there is a problem. For example of a case that happened in Pasadena, Texas in 1977, the manger of the hotel did not help the victim because of lacking of security knowledge (Hobson, 1996).

Besides training the higher level of management, training the front line employees is needed too so that they will have the knowledge on handling it. The management of the hotel can give training such as “smile training” which known as “don’t look them in the eyes training” to teach the employees so that they will be more prepare and calm when there is a situation occur. A clear and understandable instruction should be given in order to avoid fighting when there is a robbery (Hobson, 1996).

Under the research that has been done by Shellum (2002), several hotels have taken action to strengthen the security issues. They have improved their security-guards training and then evaluate them by standard operating procedures so that it is constant. Research has shown that awareness is the most important tools in order to take care of safety, thus the example of the hotel has done show the right way of training the employees (Helena & Natasa, 2010). Thus, they have increased the staff-awareness by giving them more training instead of hiring security guards (http://www.hotelasiapacific.com).

CHAPTER THREE

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

3.1 Introduction

In this chapter, the author will be describing about the research methodology which will be using to collect data for this research and seeing how the data will reach the research objectives. With the used of this research methodology by following the structure of guidelines, it will help the author to collect reliable and trustable results for the research. In order to test the results for this research, qualitative and quantitative methods will be used as a support with one another and the outcome of the results will be accurate in this research.

3.2 Research Design

Qualitative methods is used for this research whereby it will be rely more upon interviews sessions and some case studies research dealing with some small numbers of people. The author will collect the data and information by targeting to interview the people in Shangri-la Hotel on how they train their staffs and guests to keep themselves safe while being in the hotel. The author would plan to interview the managers based on one on one basis so that more information included own opinions and thoughts will be given by themselves. The interview questionnaire will be set and ask based on the related questions stated in Chapter 1.

The progress of doing interview session with the respondent will basically starts with creating the interview questionnaires and scripts that have related to this research. After the progress of preparing the questionnaire that will be asked to the respondent, setting and conducting a direct test steps will be taken for the interview session. After all, the last section of the process will be the author interview the respondent in one on one basis.

Quantitative method is another part of research methodology that will be used to collect information from the respondent. This research method will have less interview sessions and observation. However, it is more towards on the collections of the data and analyzes the numerical data and statistic. For this research, survey technique will be used by creating a survey questionnaire for the respondent, which is the guest in Shangri-la Hotel. This is done in order for the author to have more understanding on this research.

3.3 Data Collection

In this research, there are two types of data collected that has been used for this study which are the primary data and secondary data. The combination of these two data collection may be useful and able to show accurate results which will help the author to do for this research.

3.3.1 Primary Data

In this research, primary data is important for the researchers to collect data because the information that collected is direct from the respondent itself. Therefore, it will be much more accurate. However, this method that will be used requires more time, cost and energy to complete. Thus, the author needs to spend more effort in order to collect great information and data.

The primary data for this research will be collecting through one on one interview and questionnaire survey. Firstly, the author will be only target the manager of each department in Shangri-la Hotel to collect information and data which relate to this research. The respondent that will be interviewed will be at least at the manager level; therefore the results taken will be more useful and reliable. The interview questionnaire will be asked will more base on the ways and the factors of safety and security issues will be focusing on.

The purpose of using interview method is because data that given will be more in depth and interviewer able to ask more personal question in order to gather extra information. Also, it is possible for the interviewer to record down the conversation during interview session as references and proofs with the permission approve from the interviewees.

3.3.2 Secondary Data

Secondary data are data that have gathered and done by previous researchers and now become the needs for the current researcher. Besides, secondary data can be known as ready quick sources with strong facts and evidence. Secondary data includes books, journals, articles, news and others more.

As for this research, the secondary data will be more relying on the electronic journals and less on academic textbooks. The data collected will be used more on internet sources because it is easy to gather valuable data which have done by someone else previously. Electronic journals articles that used to find relevant articles and journals as a support for some facts in this research are from the database of EBSCOhost from KDU e-library websites, Emerald from USCI library website and Google Scholar. All information that collected from these three websites is validity, accuracy also free for bias.

In addition, the author will borrow some books for extra information which relate to the research doing from the library of KDU University College at Petaling Jaya campus.

3.4 Sampling Design

3.4.1 Sampling Technique

The author would choose non-probability sampling as a tool to choose the respondent for this research study. The author will be interviewed the managers of Shangri-la Hotel through quota sampling to get information. However, quota sampling will not be a helpful tool for the author to do this research because not everyone is selected to be interviewed, thus convenience sampling will be use in survey questionnaire. The questionnaire will be distributed to the targeted respondents who are willing to answer the questions sincerely. With the use of this method, it gives the author to have large number of full complete questionnaires fast and inexpensive which help the author to save cost.

3.4.2 Sampling Frame

In this research, the hotel that the author choose to do on research is Shangri-la Hotel, Kuala Lumpur, thus the author will only target the respondents who are the guests who stays in Shangri-la Hotel regardless of gender or races for the convenient sampling. As for the quota sampling, the author will only select people who have a high level of management to interview.