Ever since the Mumbai terror attacks shook the entire nation four years ago, there has been an urgent need to take a close, hard look at the security arrangements at the country’s public places, especially restaurants, stations and hotels. The government has issued guidelines on security and property owners have hastened with installing surveillance cameras or adding more guards to their rosters.
Still, when Express Computer spoke to some of the industry executives and hotels for a status update, it seems we have a long way to go before Indian citizens—or foreign tourists for that matter—can confidently feel safe.
Until recently, it was believed that hotels are designed only to provide accommodation to the traveler. A hotel was meant to go all out in ensuring comfort, providing services that pampered its guests and created a beautiful oasis in the middle of a concrete jungle. Security and safety features meant keeping out unpleasant characters and keeping a check on the occasional unruly guest. However, things have changed a lot since the Mumbai attacks and the government as well as hospitality industry has realised that hotels are practically the ideal target – minimal security measures, a large number of people, and a fixed location.
Major hotels across the country started installing boom barriers, X-ray machines and posting additional personnel – in an effort to avoid a repeat of the incident.
In terror attacks, two approaches are usually taken by terrorists. Either they use explosives like vehicle-born improvised explosive device (VBIED) or improvised explosive device (IED, as in explosives belts carried by a suicide bomber); or a group of terrorists armed with guns and grenades barge into a place and wreak havoc. The latter approach was taken by the 26/11 attackers when they barged into Taj Palace and Oberoi hotels and held an entire city—and nation—to ransom for three days.
In the light of such incidents, guidelines like CCTV surveillance with backup covering all the key areas of a public place such as a hotel or a mall, and screening of vehicles, baggage, etc have been made mandatory.
Despite all these changes and scrutiny, industry experts claim that there is a lot that still needs to be done, especially in terms of regular inspection of hotels to gauge the level and quality of security in the property and also to check quality of hardware – an area which most hotels are believed to be compromising on, given the high cost factor. Overall, while most of the hotels took initiatives initially to augment the security systems and processes deployed at their facilities, but as time has passed, these have become more of cosmetic in nature.
Mandatory rules/guidelines
Post-Mumbai attacks in 2008, the government had stated that there was a need to prepare security control rules for safety and security of buildings in the light of man-made disasters, particularly bomb threats and riots. The government also stated that citizens had expressed the need for protection, especially in sensitive and vulnerable locations like hotels, work places, malls, markets, and building complexes catering to cultural and entertainment activities.
The special regulations proposed measures like proper open spaces, security outposts, approach roads with sufficient restraints to prevent any direct movement of vehicles towards the structures, control room for security and electronic surveillance operations, light controls, fire-safety requirements and, importantly, blast resistant design for buildings. The regulations had been suggested by an expert committee under the chairmanship of N V Merani, former principal secretary of the Public Works Department.
According to Singh, regular emergency drills, testing and inspection of the safety equipment/installations is equally necessary. The government also mandates that no luggage should be stored of any walk-in guests without proper verification. Arun Dogra, Head – Security Technologies, Ingersoll Rand India, clarifies that there is no regulatory requirement in terms of security device installation. “However, most international hospitality chains have their own guidelines pertaining to security measures such as installation of CCTV cameras, boom barriers, biometric access control solutions, door frame metal detectors and baggage scanners,” he explains.
Essentially, though there are guidelines about security but there are hardly any strict rules and regulations on implementing the same. Hence, a majority of hotels deal with security according to their convenience and budget.
The current scenario
He further adds that since there are multiple vendors for every project—CCTV cameras, access cards, X-ray machines, etc—hotels very often tend to choose the lowest bidder, overlooking the quality or the kind of service that the vendor may offer.
Manoj Khadkikar, Zicom’s Head – Channel Business for Electronic Security Systems, however, differs in opinion and believes that hotels these days have become extra careful and now implement multiple layers of security. “Hotels as part of their security strategy also restrict access of people to all parts of the hotel. Security strategies thus implemented are more like building an all-new foundation of the hotel,” he says.
Currently, almost all hotels use CCTV cameras and access cards as the basic security measure. But checks at the hotel gate are very casual with frisking that is often peremptory and vehicle checks that only involve a cursory glance at the boot and the front underside. A proper check requires thorough frisking and checking the vehicles with X-ray scanners or metal detectors.
Technologies like number plate detection or face recognition are not very popular amongst hotels. The video footage from round-the-clock surveillance is stored for a maximum period of 30-60 days and there is no provision for back up beyond the hotel property. What this means is that once the footage is deleted by the hotel, it is gone forever. So, if ever there is an attack in the hotel wherein the terrorist stayed as a guest at the property, the evidence of the same would be lost once the property is damaged or the investigator needs to look at the footage that is over two months old.
The cost of security implementation
The Indian security and surveillance industry has been undergoing radical changes. In a span of less than two years, there have been some major transitions in both technology and applications. The market has transitioned from analogue based camera installations to Internet Protocol (IP) based video surveillance. But the flip side is that the cost of using these new technologies has gone up considerably.
The cost of implementing the entire security infrastructure ranging from CCTV cameras to access cards, X-ray machines, baggage scanners, etc, differs from property to property.
“For a 10-floor property it would cost approximately Rs 1 crore,” estimates Singh of Hilton.
Bhattacharya on the other hand feels that for a big hotel the entire security set-up comes to a total cost of Rs 3-5 crore, while the same for a small hotel costs about Rs 75 – 80 lakh.
To sum it up, cost of a security system is generally the function of the size of the property and the need as seen by the management. Since there are no official figures available, vendors and hotel chains give a rough estimate. These estimates are mostly very different from one another given the property size and the number of features they would want to install in their hotels/restaurant. So, while most vendors as well as hotels give an estimate of Rs 3-5 crore, Siemens differs in opinion by valuing it to about Rs 15 crore for a big property and about a lakh for smaller restaurants.
“We have seen a restaurant with as small as 4-6 camera analog system costing less than Rs one lakh to state of the art hotels, where security design was an integral part of the design costing more than Rs15 crore,” says Ajay Gupta, Head – Enterprise Solutions and Services, Building Technologies, Siemens Ltd.
Pain points
Despite incidents of terror and issuance of guidelines by the government, hotels in general are still unprepared for any catastrophe that may strike them. The main reason for such a lapse is the lack of awareness among hotel staff or management. Secondly, most of the times security is outsourced, which often increases the chances of security being compromised (though this point may not hold if the outsourced agency is very competent and the hotel has ensured that the agency shares liability in the event of a breach).
In addition, although the government has laid down extensive guidelines, it has not followed it up with intense and regular examination of the security framework present at hotels. Also, the specifications of certain hardware, especially CCTV cameras (resolution, coverage, etc), have not been provided by the government—which leaves it to hotels to find a way around norms or put the least expensive hardware to save on costs.
In the words of Bhattacharya of Panasonic, “Hotels usually compromise on procurement of quality hardware and solutions, not realising that they are compromising on the security of their staff and guests.”
Emerging trends
When it comes to security, the most commonly used solution is the video surveillance, followed by access control. IP or network camera surveillance has picked up well in the Indian market. Though the hospitality industry is yet to see complete evolution and transformation of their surveillance systems, the trend is fast catching up owing to IP technology’s numerous benefits. The biggest advantage of IP-based surveillance is proactive monitoring, in which one can easily access the footage from any remote location over the Internet.
According to industry experts, the IP-based surveillance market in India is valued at about $50-60 million and is expected to grow at 45% year on year for the next four to five years. Separate figures for the hospitality segment are not known but the sector is believed to form a significant chunk of the overall pie.
Perhaps what hotels need to do to justify the spends on surveillance equipment is to look at the business analytics aspect. But such possibilities cannot turn into reality if the hotels do not shift away from analogue cameras to IP-based systems and are ready to dish out a little more on analytics.
IP video ‘surveillance as a service’ is another trend that is slowly catching on. “In the coming years, we are likely to experience demand for this concept, which is similar to the SaaS (software as a Service) model. People will be able to avail surveillance solutions from a company specialising in the same for their homes and businesses, just the way they make use of telephone, electricity and other utilities,” notes Holla of Axis Communications.
Another trend is the increasing use of DR applications for quick recovery from downtime and also to protect the data. “Today, the hospitality industry has to support global operations, meet demanding compliance requirements and manage ever-growing data volumes. Therefore,
Gupta of Siemens Ltd, however differs in opinion saying, “Our experience has been that not many hotels actually understand both IT and security topics to specify and use back up and data recovery systems for their security needs. Security usually has been decided more on need basis and storage is based out of compulsion. Large hotel chains, have their own fully developed security infrastructure and integrate these with their IT requirements to archive or store the video footage in the storage arrays or devices, whereas, others usually add hard discs to the standard DVR/NVR supplied by their vendor.”
“Most of the hotels go for storage based on the recommendations of the local or state Police authorities asking them to store the video for specified period,” Gupta adds. Thermal imagery is another breakthrough technology expected to evolve as a major technology solution for security-related issues. Thermal imaging is a critical component to plug the gaps that normal visible surveillance solutions have in certain high-risk environments. Thermal imaging is not hampered by environmental conditions like illumination levels, snow, haze, smoke and camouflage. This helps in reliable information at all times and may also prove to be a boon for analytics providers who face a challenge of performance degradation on visible video in certain conditions.
CIOs and security managers of hotels also expect more stringent laws and hope to deploy best practices for making their properties secure—or even flaunt security as a competitive edge.
“Hotels can always make security their USP besides the luxury services they offer. A ‘good night’s guarantee promising a safe stay or money back’ is another way to attract guests as well as ensure best services. This is a trend we hope emerges in the near future, though Premier Inn already offers its customers this deal,” says Prasad.
One key change in the security of hotels, especially for new properties that are coming up, will be that hotel management companies will play a larger role during the development phase itself. According to Gupta, “These companies are now involved during the construction phase and demanding that the builder follow their norms. This requires the builder to take security as a serious and integral part of the infrastructure and, accordingly, budgeting for the system which will meet the global security norms.”
Travelers’ demand for hotels that promote enhanced security is expected to increase in the coming years especially with the added fear of terrorism. Security amenities are important to travelers, especially with the elderly and women traveling alone. Obviously, the security hole cannot be filled with any single measure or technology. In order to make their guests feel more secure and prevent further 26/11-style attacks, the hospitality industry must take a comprehensive view—and put in place what is best, not what is cheapest.