Hotels have been doing wellness checks for years. Also known as “security checks” and “room checks,” It’s just a quick little peek in the room to make sure everything and everyone is OK.
When did hotel wellness checks start?
Some people think wellness checks started during Covid when daily housekeeping went the way of the dodo bird. It didn’t.
Others think they started after the October 2017 shooting from the Mandalay Bay Hotel in Las Vegas. That would be incorrect, as well (although many hotels were doing the checks before that tragic event, a significant amount did indeed start doing them on a regular basis from that point onward).
There’s actually no specific time – read: some specific event – that caused wellness checks to start. Different hotel chains, as well as different hotels within a chain, have started them at different times for a variety of reasons.
Why do hotels do wellness checks?
As we said, hotels simply want to make sure that everyone (read: their guests) and everything (read: their hotel rooms) are OK.
More than one hotel has had complaints of a bad odor and it turns out a guest had passed away in the room days earlier and no one had noticed.
Sometimes a sink or tub faucet has been left on – on purpose or by mistake – and a room check could prevent a flood issue to happen.
And frankly, if someone had done a room check before the Las Vegas shooter went on his rampage, they might have seen the dozens of guns and hundreds of rounds of ammo he had stockpiled in the room.
Do hotels HAVE to do wellness checks of your room?
Legally? No. It’s just a good, smart practice to do so according to whatever protocol they have set up. Once a day, once every other day, or whatever.
Can you refuse to have a wellness check?
Nope. Here’s why (mainly paragraph 2). They’re going to do a wellness check whether you like it or not.
What about the Do Not Disturb sign?
Think of it as a suggestion ;-).
PC: Quinn Dombrowski / flickr / CC BY-SA 2.0
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