Comment by pledess
2 years ago
Many U.S. hotels changed that after the Mandalay Bay hotel incident in October 2017. A guest can no longer assume that their deadbolted hotel room door will only be opened in an emergency. Routinely, hotel staff (not accompanied by police) may knock and then immediately open a guest's door for what they consider a "welfare check" (e.g., guest has had a Do Not Disturb sign for 2 days). And, yes, guests may be strongly opposed to this for a variety of reasons (in the room but undressed, etc.) but it often is part of a hotel's normal operating practices. One of many references: https://www.reddit.com/r/askhotels/comments/vaxae2/comment/i...
> Many U.S. hotels changed that after the Mandalay Bay hotel incident in October 2017. A guest can no longer assume that their deadbolted hotel room door will only be opened in an emergency.
I don't see the connection. The Mandalay Bay incident was an emergency, and the door was forced. What needed to change?
I believe the above poster is saying that hotels want their staff to periodically barge in with little warning just to catch the rare moment when there's an alarming array of guns or a dead person or something other than recreational amounts of drugs laying in plain sight.
It would be very shitty policy to "barge in with little warning". Rooms are checked regularly, but there should be quite a bit of knocking, and in the event it is deadbolted and the hotel guest refuses to open the door, or arrange a time the room can be inspected, then hotel management should be convened. Only after initial contact has been made and the hotel guest unreasonably refuses to allow access for an unreasonable period of time should hotel management "barge" in, or call the police.
Yes, a hotel room should be checked regularly, at a minimum of once per week if not more frequently. And that should have always been the case due to pest control, not due to possibility of a crazy shooter.
In any case, I would classify a guest refusing to open the door for a room check as outline in the rental agreement as an emergency (which should simply state once every x days or per management’s discretion).
It could be up to hotel management to go in without police, but I would certainly not give any line level employee an emergency key card to carry around at all times for that scenario. And I would also expect a manager to take on that task themselves.