Security gets VIP suite

Boston-area hotels are preparing significantly beefed-up security measures for convention week, sharply restricting access to their buildings, sweeping rooms for electronic bugs, checking ventilation systems, and employing new high-tech identification systems to guard against terrorists and unruly protesters.

The hotels will increase their private security staff and will each have a Boston police officer assigned to their lobby to offer a high-profile presence and act as a liaison between hotels and police departments, according to police officials and hotel security consultants.

"In hotels, you've got a bunch of innocent victims," said Rick Avery, president of Securitas Security Services, which is overseeing security at three Boston convention hotels. "You can have a couple of thousand people. That's the kind of target you want if you're going to try to wreak havoc. They're in their rooms sleeping at night or eating and drinking and not paying attention to what's going on."

In addition to the stepped-up police presence, some hotel personnel will be checking the room keys and, in some cases, the identification of guests at the elevators each night. Some hotels will issue their own credentials, in addition to room keys. Unregistered guests will have difficulty moving unaccompanied beyond the lobby. Security personnel will limit some hotels' public areas to delegates and officials who have credentials.

"Delegates will find it very difficult to bring guests to their rooms during the convention," said Harvey Brandt, Boston chapter chairman of the International Lodging, Safety, and Security Association.

Along with the threat of terrorism, hotel security chiefs and police are concerned that protesters might try to enter hotels to make a statement. Hotels are trying to head off lobby protests and hoax bomb threats, in addition to the terrorist threats they have been guarding against since the attacks of 2001.

"There are valid concerns about protesters getting into the lobbies of delegate hotels," Brandt said. "History has proven that when you have a hard security zone like the FleetCenter, those people choosing [to] voice their opinion find it easier to disrupt delegates."

Hotel security has already been tightened since 9/11, managers and security specialists said. The city's hotels often host dignitaries and celebrities and are used to restricting access and paying close attention to those who enter their buildings. But with such a large concentration of guests in the city at one time, hotels have multiplied their efforts, formulating extensive security plans under the guidance of Boston police and private security consultants.

For example, some security personnel already search vehicles parked in hotel garages, and that will continue during convention week. In some cases, security personnel will also photograph the license plates of vehicles left overnight during convention week, which begins July 26.

"It is the normal stuff you would do for any event taking place at one hotel," said Boston police Superintendent Robert Dunford, who is in charge of the department's convention security. "But the situation is, we have 23 hotels that are affected."

Boston police have been conducting regular training sessions with hotel security staff for the past year, Dunford said. Police have been instructing hotels on how to handle suspicious packages, for example, and they have examined each hotel's evacuation plans. Police have also asked the hotels to "be a little bit more circumspect with employees hired in the last six months or a year," Dunford said.

Some hotels, especially those hosting former presidents and other dignitaries with Secret Service protection, are also conducting background screening on all employees. Former presidents such as Bill Clinton, who is staying at the Charles Hotel in Cambridge, will have Secret Service protection; the 25 Democratic governors expected at the convention will be accompanied by their own security details; House and Senate leaders, some of whom are staying at Boston Harbor Hotel, will have the protection of officers from the US Capitol Police.

Employees will be asked to pay extra attention to what is happening in their workplaces, said Avery, the security consultant.

"Since 9/11, one of the major changes in hotels is the training," he said. "They train all their people to notice things that may look out of place."

Nine Zero, a two-year-old hotel on Tremont Street, is using the convention as the occasion to implement a new security technology that uses the iris as a way to identify people. During the convention, the system, installed this week, will be used in the hotel's loading dock and elite suite. The system takes a photograph of the iris, to verify guests' and employees' identities.

"It's the wave of the future, no question about it," said Jim Horsman, general manager of the hotel. "We determined this is the best way to keep our hotel security updated and make the experience as pleasant as possible. . . . If you are the fish purveyor who brings a load to the restaurant, if you are not in the system, you cannot get into the hotel."

The hotel has hired a private security firm for the convention.

At the Lenox Hotel, which is hosting the Connecticut delegation, vendors will have to use keycards to enter the receiving dock, where a second security guard will be posted for convention week. The hotel's usual contingent of security staff will be quadrupled for the convention.

"We're going to have to be at the doors 24 hours a day, and we have to monitor every single package and delivery at the receiving dock before it makes it into the building," said Jose Estrompa, general manager of the Lenox and Copley Square hotels. "We're going to be very, very aware of what's going on around us."