The case for giving hotels health grades

123rf.com

HOTEL HEALTH: It pays to check up on your hotel before you book.

The difference between a hotel room at $75 a night and $750 a night is the view, the extra shampoo, the cost of the pillows, the fluff of the towels.

Price is a measure of comfort and service. What must always be the same - at every price - is your security, your safety and cleanliness.

Unfortunately, it's not.

Across the US, hotels are skimping on key safety measures, and the consequences range from stolen laptops and Peeping Toms to sexual assaults and robbery at gunpoint. More than 125 property crimes are committed in US hotels and motels every day, in addition to more than 21 violent crimes (excluding murders).

What's needed is a grading system that will alert potential guests to the quality of a hotel's security, guaranteeing that A-rated facilities have measures in place to assure guests' safety and the rooms' cleanliness. In New York City, Los Angeles and other cities, restaurants are graded based on government inspections, and those grades are posted so you can see them before you walk in the door.

Hotels and motels also are entrusted with customers' health and safety, and they must be held equally accountable.

That accountability starts with basic security. For instance, many hotels fail to perform adequate background checks on job applicants before hiring them.

In September 2011, a woman staying at a Best Western hotel in Arizona woke up in the middle of the night to find a man standing over her bed. She says the man raped her. He was a registered level-3 sex offender, according to news reports, but Best Western had hired him as a night clerk and given him a master key to guest rooms, allowing him unfettered access to turn any of its female guests into his next victims.

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The case for giving hotels health grades