Duty of professionals to third parties such as guests is to keep the guest safe and have the legal responsibility to keep the guest safe with reasonable care. In the hotels situation, hotels must ensure that their property is safe and secure as to keep their guests safe. These include things such as furnitures, keeping lights working, emergency exits, emergency lights, smoke detectors, and fire alarms and emergency plans. They also have the duty to keep guests information private and secure. They must have their own security to keep the hotel and information safe and secure and make sure that they can prove that hotel give reasonable care to their guests. Hotels also have the duty to care for their employees and any third party contractors.
They need to provide a safe environment and also protect guests from any dangers inside or outside.
Standard of conduct is another form of negligence that enables the party to sue on behalf of the standard care which is not graduated to consider the reasonable person of low intelligence or the reasonably forgetful person. An example would be if the General Manager does not record harmful scenarios in the vicinity of the hotel and or on property. Another case would be if the management
does not need a radio on duty all the time, but fails to document important protocols to staff or management which can lead to hotel operation failures, and or scenarios in which messages are not received in a timely manner. This can result to failure of housekeeping cleaning rooms, and or communicating about strange behaviour of hotel guests which may result to danger on the property
and or guests. If one is harmed in any manner because the hotel avoided and or did not use specific protocol, they can be sued for negligence.
The different types of insurance that can protect the Peninsula Chicago hotel include:
Liability Insurance: This type of insurance covers claims against your business for bodily injury, property damage and/or personal and advertising injuries. It is important to consider this insurance as there many incidents that can occur within hotels; for instance, if a guest gets sick from the eating at the restaurant, or if a guest slips and sustains a head injury. It covers claims against your business by guests or other third parties for injury or damage caused by products (including food) that you make or sell.
Workers compensation: The workers compensation covers lost wages and medical treatments from work-related injury or illness. A large majority of the workers’ compensation injuries in the hotel and hospitality business are from the housekeeping department, and more specifically housekeepers/room attendant injuries that could have been prevented.
Property Insurance: Hotels are filled with furnishing, carpeting and amenities- if property is lost or damaged due to theft, vandalism, fire, severe weather or other catastrophic event, this coverage can provide compensation for the losses and have sufficient coverage for the many things in the hotel.
Data Breach: Hotels store a lot of private records of both employees and guests on the computers, servers and paper files and this is their responsibility to protect this information.If a breach or hack occurs, electronically or from paper file, a Data Breach policy will provide protection against the loss.
Errors and Omissions Insurance: The policy provides coverage for failure or improperly delivering professional services. It covers the liability of a hotel for claims that result from providing facilities, goods or services, including misdelivery of items held for sale.
Hotels are places to go to have a great memorable time and be given exponential service. In our hotel The Peninsula Chicago it is no different. We hold each of our team members to the highest standards. By doing so, it helps protect us as a company and brand. We expect every team member to participate and help us keep our building and guests safe. Team members are expected to watch for any suspicious activity, checking for hazards like wet floors, unclean stairways, and any other possible hazards. For these reasons, our defense would be Contributory Negligence. Contributory Negligence means “if the plaintiff was also acting negligently in any manner, he or she could not recover any damages from the defendant” Dauchy, C. E. (2018). How this is done is by first investigating the reason for the given lawsuit, next looking into what kind of situation it was and how it could have been prevented. Lastly, if it could have been avoided then answering the question are we be liable for any injury or payouts.
Why we chose the Contributory Negligence defense is we try and do everything in our power to avoidany damages or harm to our guests. Constantwalk throughs of the hotel to check cleanliness and any hazards. The team members are trained to our high level of service that ensure that everything they are doing is by our book. At our five star hotel we expect our guests to obey by rules put in place for everyone's safety. When their is negligence by the guests it creates a hostile and unsafe environment for everyone inside.
Some examples that have lead us to choose contributory negligence are:
Slip and Falls- when a guest spills the ice in the room, walks in and falls causing injury on his back. One of the guest taking the stairs while being intoxicated by the alcohol.
Hazardous work environment- when one of the cooks in the kitchen is not wearing non slip shoes and it causes an injury in the kitchen.
Fires-when a guest leaves the cigarette still lighted up for the night and it causes a fire. One of the guests lives their food inside the microwave for too long or uses materials that are not safe for microwave, and it creates fire.
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