NYC Approves Hotel Safety Bill Set to Require Licenses and Panic Buttons

New York City has taken one large step toward increasing safety in its hotels.

The New York City Council voted 45-4 Wednesday afternoon to approve a fiercely contested bill that would implement safety measures at the city’s hotels for workers and guests, including requiring hotels to have licenses to operate and providing panic buttons for employees.

The Safe Hotels Act, sponsored by Councilmember Julie Menin, would require front desks to be staffed at all hours in an effort to increase security and combat potential violence at New York City’s more than 700 hotels.

“There is a desperate need for regulation,” Menin said during the City Council meeting Wednesday. “The Safe Hotels Act would ensure protections for communities and guests. It requires hotels to maintain the cleanliness of each guest room, equip all core employees with panic buttons and provide human-trafficking training.”

A spokesperson for the City Council did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The bill now goes to Mayor Eric Adams, who has backed the measure, to await his signature.

The bill has been a sore subject within New York City’s hospitality industry over the past few months.

Major industry groups such as the New York Hotel & Gaming Trades Council and the Hotel Association of New York City have endorsed the bill, while others have called it a “nuclear bomb” for the local hotel industry still recovering from the pandemic, the New York Times reported.

A group of hotel owners in the city even planned to raise $20 million to fight the proposal, claiming it would “kill jobs,” drive up room rates, and threaten the “livelihoods of tens of thousands of workers,” the New York Post reported in August.

In response to the complaints, Menin made compromises to the bill and exempted smaller hotels with 100 rooms or less from the requirement to hire core staff directly, the Times reported.

Any hotels that violate the bill’s license requirement will be subject to civil penalties and face fines of up to $5,000, according to the Times.

Still, the bill’s naysayers still aren’t happy with the final outcome.

“Today’s passage of the Safe Hotels Act by the City Council caps a legislative scramble and special interest power play that will do irreparable harm to the city’s hotel industry and tourism economy,” Kevin Carey, interim CEO of the American Hotel & Lodging Association, said in a statement to Commercial Observer. “From the start, this rushed and haphazard legislative process has been in service of one goal: to deliver a single special interest victory at the expense of small and minority-owned businesses.”

Carey also said the updated version of the bill “still unfairly and arbitrarily targets” hotels with “regulations that have nothing to do with the bill’s stated goal of increasing health and safety.”

“Instead, this bill will do material damage to the businesses and the tax revenue that hotels generate for the city’s economy and result in higher costs for travelers,” Carey added.

The bill came about after many hotels in the city saw increased crime rates during the pandemic. There have been more than 14,000 criminal complaints to the New York City Police Department about hotels and motels and 39 murders in the past four years, Menin said during Wednesday’s meeting.

Menin added that the passage of the bill will “result in important public safety measures” for hotels across the city.

Isabelle Durso can be reached at idurso@commercialobserver.com.