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By Mary Scoviak
Okay. It's only November. But for designers, as for editors, 2009 is effectively over. Conversations inevitably drift toward conjecture about next year. And one topic that keeps coming up is security. Designers have always had to address life safety issues, but security used to be mostly the operator's terriority. The rash of terrorist actions in hotels from the November 2008 attacks in Mumbai to this July's bombings in Jakarta changed the rules. Now, every aspect of architecture and design is being re-evaluated alongside operational best practices to create seamless strategies for protecting guests.
The pressure's on to find solutions fast. Hotels are increasingly likely to be targets for militants, predicts Stratfor, an Austin, Texas-based provider of global intelligence on political, economic and military developments. Hard targets such as government or military facilities have already stepped up their security measures, states Stratfor's special security report “The Militant Threat to Hotels.” Hotels are the next logical choice.
Here's Stratfor's thinking: “By striking an international hotel in a major city, militants can make the same kind of statement against the West as they can be striking an embassy. Hotels are often full of Western business travelers, diplomats and intelligence officers. This makes them target-rich environments for militants seeking to kill Westerners and gain international media attention without having to penetrate the extreme security of a hard target like a modern embassy.”
That leaves hotel operators, designers, architects and security specialists to figure out how to balance the need to create a hospitable environment with the reality of having to defend against improvised explosive devices (IEDs), both vehicle-borne and those deployed by suicide bombers in the public spaces, guerilla-style attacks and attacks targeting individual VIPs.
I asked Alan Orlob, Marriott International's vice president, corporate security, what designers and architects should expect. The former special forces soldier and security specialist offered this food for thought.
Are hotels going to be bunkers?
No. And there's not going to be one solution that fits all. You need to understand the risk first. The security needs of a hotel in London are different than those of one in Singapore or Kabul. You also need to know which locations will need more flexibiltiy. For example, we continue to monitor locations around the world with commercial services and our own in-house analysts. Some cities that were always considered safe in the past now present more of a risk.
What's likely to change?
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