Burglary
This is a summary of research conducted to evaluate a Reducing Burglary Initiative (RBI) project that aimed to reduce burglary from visitors to a 'virtual community' of hotels in a town where tourism is a key industry. The project ran from October 2000 to March 2002. It is one of 247 projects funded by the Home Office's RBI. The objective demonstrated increasing staff awareness of hotel burglary and target hardening.
Title: Evaluation of a Hotel Burglary Project
Author: Home Office
Series: Home Office Online Report 16/04
Number of pages: 12
Date Published: March 2004
Summary
There has been little research into hotel crime and interventions to reduce the incidence of such crime. Research on crimes against businesses indicates high levels of risk amongst hotels (Gill, 1993), and research on the relationship between tourism and crime demonstrates both high crime rates in tourist areas and high levels of risk amongst tourists. Furthermore, anecdotal evidence collected during this evaluation indicated that police forces across the country consider hotel burglary a serious problem.
This report summarises the findings from a hotel burglary reduction project, one of 247 projects funded by the Home Office Reducing Burglary Initiative. A number of lessons can be learnt from this project which could prove useful in informing similar initiatives in the future.
The project, which ran from October 2000 to March 2002, aimed to reduce burglary from visitors to a ~Qvirtual community~R of hotels in a town where tourism is a key industry. The initiative focused on burglary involving guests, but it could also impact on break-ins to hotels where the proprietor was a victim, as well as other offences in and around the hotels. The objective was to reduce the level of hotel burglary through target hardening and increasing staff awareness.
Key findings
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Between April 1999 and March 2002, 1,226 offences took place in the 450 hotels in the project target area. Fifty per cent of these offences were recorded as burglary dwelling or burglary other.
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Around a quarter (26%) of hotels in the target area stated that they had made improvements to their security during the project period.
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Two-thirds (69%) of the hotels in the target area were aware of the hotel burglary initiative.
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Twenty-eight per cent of the hoteliers were aware of a crime reduction conference run by the project and approximately half of these attended.
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After the initiative had been implemented, overall 49 per cent of the hotels provided safes in guest~Rs rooms or centrally, 43 per cent had a CCTV system in operation and 31 per cent had either a centralised or stand alone alarm system.
Getting a copy
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Evaluation of a Hotel Burglary Project 
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Last update: 30 March 2004