Editor’s notes

The highly publicized lapse in hotel security involving ESPN sportscaster Erin Andrews who was stalked in several hotels and surreptitiously filmed nude through an altered peephole, will hopefully bring about some major changes in hotel security policy.

Throughout the unfolding of this story, I’ve been shocked about the egregious mishandling of security in not one, but three different hotel chains across the country. Not only was Michael David Barrett, the man accused of stalking Andrews, able to find out what room she was staying in (and consequently book an adjacent room), but he was also able to physically reconfigure the peephole of her room so he could videotape her.

While he is expected to plead guilty today, according to this article in USA Today, Andrews is seeking more widespread improvements in hotel security, that frankly, seem like fairly common sense to me.

* Install hallway cameras on every floor. If there were hallway cameras in the hotels where Andrews stayed, the footage could have shown her stalker outside her hotel-room door tampering with the peephole, says her lawyer.
* Improve employee training. Barrett was able to stalk Andrews in hotels at least three times and book a room next to her’s because the hotel violated a basic guest promise: That their information is confidential.
* Seek guest consent before assigning adjacent rooms: At the Marriott in Nashville, Barrett succeeded in getting a hotel employee to assign him a room that adjoined Andrews’ room in a semi-private alcove without her consent.
* Understand red flags. When someone calls a hotel and asks if a certain person is staying there, “that ought to send up a cautionary flag,” her lawyer said. “It’s step more serious than ‘Can you please connect me?’”
* Improve peepholes: The peepholes used widely in U.S. hotels are easy to tamper, her lawyer said, so hotels should consider buying a more expensive kind with tiny slots that cover the hole inside the guestroom he said.

These seem like fairly simple measures to improve security. Frankly, this story is a huge embarrassment to the hotel security profession and I hope that each and every one of the hotel security directors out there uses this story as a reason to re-evaluate their security measures and make sure these types of glaring issues are resolved. Ridiculous.