> Since the festival shooting Vegas hotels have a policy of entering every room every 24 hours
> so now they do inspections when BlackHat/DefCon is in town because they don't trust their own tracking systems
What's the difference between these two statements? It sounds to me like the only point is that they have a manual ledger to track inspections, which is probably for the best, given that any would-be domestic terrorist would surely know how to use Google and find this information too.
One describes the policy. Which is what they want to achieve. They want to achieve that a hotel employee checks on every room every 24 hour.
The other describes that they don't trust their usual implementation during BlackHat/DefCon.
> which is probably for the best, given that any would-be domestic terrorist would surely know how to use Google and find this information too.
The whole thing provides probabilistic protection anyway. (Also known as a security theatre, if you want to be uncharitable.) A determined attacker will appear as a model hotel guest up until the point they want to attack. Then they wait until housekeeping is done with their room and move their weapons in the room only after. Hotels are full of people moving luggage around at all hours so this won't be suspicious to anyone.
The policy will probably catch some would be attackers (the dumb ones). It will also probably uncover a lot more drug overdoses/suicides/murders/sudden heart attack victims, several days earlier than they would be uncovered otherwise.
I bet that for every Stephen Paddock found there is at least a hundred "oops this room has a dead person in it for some reason".
I find it puzzling how you (and all the other commenters here) accept this rule like sheeps. Normally, you US citizens cannot stop boasting how the USA is supposedly "the land of the free".
So don't take this personally, I'm replying to this as to all the others that appear like they find it totally normal that some security guy or hotel cleaning can enter a rented room. Every 24 hours, or at all. It's not normal. And IMHO not even needed / helpful.
No 24h check will ever hinder a mass-shooter. The criminal would just wait until room cleaning made their job, then go to his car and get the big suitcase with all the guns and ammunition one can buy entirely too easy in the US. And then he can shot from his room, minutes after this compulsory do-nothing 24h "security" check.
Here, were I am (Germany), things are completely different.
First, it's not so easy to get weapons. Not even at gun exhibitions. That in itself helps tremendously getting a less violent society.
Second, here we have the right, upheld by courts, that a hotel tenant can make the hotel not enter his room. A "do not disturb" sign is everything that is needed. If you want, you can look it up under "Frankfurter Landgerichts aus dem Jahr 2009 (AZ 2-19 O 153/08)".
Sure, there are other rulings that landlords (including hoteliers) have under some circumstances the right to enter a property they rented out. Like fire, or water pipe broken. Actual, imminent danger. Not hypothetical danger! But they even cannot get a general "you can always enter" term signed, that would be null and void over here.
The more free private entities are from government oversight, the more carefully they have to read contracts. For example, even the US is not quite so free as to allow people to sell their organs. If it were, citizens would have to carefully read room rental contracts at hotels, to make sure there were no conditions which included forfeiture of a kidney.
(FWIW, I'm now living in Germany, and it's significantly more relaxing with a bit less freedom. There's definitely different tradeoffs which make more sense for different people).
Here in Germany, I'm not magically immune to crime, but the base rates of gun crime are so low that I never worry about loud bangs. That comes at the cost of the freedom granted by the Second Amendment in America.
Another, slightly less salient & serious example: Germany has strict laws about public photography. Take a look at any "embarrassing pratfalls" or "annoying Karens" video reel: They may be US-weighted, but they come from all over the world--but not Germany. The lack of freedom to document the people around you on video trades off with the security of knowing you can slip on a banana peel without being known worldwide as "the banana peel guy."
What do you mean "accept this rule like sheeps"? Do you expect violent resistance? Do you want to sue someone because a security guy poked their head in the room for 30s? How would "I do not accept this rule like sheeps" look like in your opinion? How far would you go resisting it?
> you US citizens
Wrong assumption.
> So don't take this personally,
I won't. Clearly you don't know anything about me.
> appear like they find it totally normal
I can explain what is a fact of life (they have this policy) without expressing my opinion about it.
> No 24h check will ever hinder a mass-shooter.
As clearly stated in my comment.
> The criminal would just wait until room cleaning made their job, then go to his car and get the big suitcase with all the guns and ammunition one can buy entirely too easy in the US. And then he can shot from his room, minutes after this compulsory do-nothing 24h "security" check.
Yes. Exactly this is described in my comment.
> that would be null and void over here.
Thank you. Interesting addition to the conversation about how it is in Germany. Different places have wildly different legal norms and expectations.
For me it is hard o get upset about this either way. A hotel is a different type of arrangement than renting.
The protocol for non-DefCon rooms:
* Housekeeping services the room.
* If housekeeping was unable to service the room, security will come take a look.
The protocol for DefCon rooms:
* Security comes and takes a look no matter what, and is, from reports, particularly invasive.
* They have to visually inspect upwards of 1000 rooms every day looking for vaguely electronic looking things
* They have to use Microsoft Teams
Poor Hilton employees...
That’s the explanation for the behavior not the behavior itself.
Last time I traveled the concierge looked at me as if I was some horrible person because I requested daily housekeeping, not this "on demand" nonsense which has sadly become pervasive.
They don't change sheets or towels ("for the environment")... just inspect the room, then leave.
Thanks for clarification
Washing your towel after every use is incredibly wasteful, and unnecessary. If the towel is "dirty" after you've bathed and used it to dry yourself off, then you probably should do a better job cleaning yourself while bathing.
What I suspect is that people here have massive washer/dryer combos that slurp oodles of energy, and use them only infrequently?
We can only fit one day of the clothes for the entire family in a single wash, therefore washing happens every day.
But on the other hand: If you didn't have to wash everyone's towels every night, would you still have to do laundry daily?
Bigger washer/dryers are not necessarily more wasteful, for what it's worth... it really depends on their efficiency (both for water and dryer heat). Sometimes doing it in bulk all at once can save water/energy per item even if it uses more overall. And newer machines tend to be a lot more efficient than older ones, especially if they are load-sensing front-loaders. Anyway, that's not really the point.
It's just interesting that your laundry patterns are different than anyone I've ever known. Thanks for explaining, that's all :)
Sure we could wash less if we really wanted to, but it just doesn’t signify. The washer uses like 40L of water over 30m of runtime and then it’s done. We hang the clothes (and towels) outside, and by evening everything is fresh.
The shower runs at about 10L a minute. I think you can see how the washing quickly becomes irrelevant, and the shower needs to be heated too, unlike the washer.
Do you really wash your towels after each use? Why? How?
Presumably the same as everyone else, by putting them in the washer.
Hell, a lot of hotels were doing that before the pandemic. I thought it was a really good thing. I certainly don't need my towels replaced every day; that's just pointless and wasteful.
Haven't been to the US though...where is the connection to COVID?
After covid, many hotels never fully returned to daily housekeeping, often opting for every other day or so. Some still don't offer it until you check out. Guess they rode the covid coattails for the cost savings.
I use my imagination. The most likely answer is that there was a check and they haven't noticed because they were out and about.
On a balance of probabilities without hearing more on how they specifically verified it I will still assume the alternate hypothesis. Which is that someone on the internet is very sure about something and they are wrong.
It is not due to a lack of imagination. Or because I haven't heard some cool spy trick you have heard about. It's because I find it (in the absence of other information) the most likely explanation given a lifetime of observations about human nature.
C’mon.
These are the same people that started to not change linens or provide new clean towels unless you ask (or infrequently) for ‘environmental reasons’. (Aka profit margins)
And yes, back in the day it was normal for housekeeping to clean every occupied room every day, unless you told them not to. Unless you were in a roach motel or something.
I don't understand why you would not want them to clean your room as it's included in the price.
Most hotels stock at least two rolls of toilet paper too. I’ve personally never run out of toilet paper this quickly.
Most hotels I've stayed at give you at least 2 or 3 rolls of TP, and while the soap bars they give you are small, they last more than a week, easy.
answering for myself, having been in too many hotel rooms in my lifetime:
it's easier to ask for towels and toiletries than deal with binding arbitration after having things stolen from your room. I can make my own bed.
It's all in the small print too which nobody reads (these hotels have legal advisors).
Room service counted as a room check so security only did it if you refused room service.
Some clever hackers figured out how to use the phone system to make them think housekeeping had been there[0], so now they do inspections when BlackHat/DefCon is in town because they don't trust their own tracking systems.
[0] One of the hotels had housekeeping dial *5 on the room phone when they entered the room to clean, and then *5 again when they left. So some hackers would put out their "do not clean" sign and then just dial *5 twice 10 minutes apart so no one would get suspicious.