Dozens of hotels in Amsterdam

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Dozens of hotels in Amsterdam have drawn up a blacklist with the names of guests they don’t want to back in their hotel. People who wreck their rooms, steal hotel belongings or harrass the chambermaids will be entered into a so-called ‘warning register’ and won’t be able to check in at other hotels.Almost 70 hotels – with at least three stars – took part in compiling the list for Amsterdam Hotel Security Management. If a hotel reports an incident to the police, the guest can be added to the list. Amsterdam hotels are often faced with badly-behaved guests, explains Peter Willems, who has worked in hotel security for 15 years:“We’re often confronted with people who are re-arranging their room - usually under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Or people who devise all kinds of schemes to stay on longer in the hotel, leading a life of luxury and then taking off like the wind. And then there are people who are employed by the hotel and steal while at work. We want to ensure that they don’t get hired if they’ve been reported by other hotels.”Crazy
Mr Willems is a security manager at the Dorint Hotel near Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport. He recalls being present when a ‘well-dressed but chaotic gentleman from Sweden’ checked into the hotel and paid for his suite in advance. Peter Willems did not quite trust the man and conducted an investigation. It turned out the man had gone completely crazy in a nearby hotel, causing 4,000-euros’ worth of damage.It is exactly this type of situation that the new blacklist is intended to prevent. The Rolling Stones aren't the only people to have thrown television sets off their balcony. Peter Willems can give numerous examples of other undesirable behaviour:“Ripping light fixtures from walls, destroying the desk in the room, falling asleep in the bath tub – probably under the influence of alcohol – and keeping the tap running until three floors down it comes streaming down the walls.”The unwelcome guests are listed – including a photograph – on a website which can only be accessed by the 66 associated hotels. It took two years of research and consultations before the Dutch privacy watchdog, the CBP, gave the green light for the blacklist. A CBP spokesperson confirms that the Amsterdam warning system meets all privacy requirements. “We will conduct random checks to see whether they will continue to meet these requirements.”Gangs
Hotel security officer Willems expects that hotel thieves will be especially inconvenienced by the blacklist. He says they are mostly gangs from South America, North Africa and Eastern Europe."They travel to the Netherlands in teams of two to four people for a month of pillaging. They quietly enter a hotel dressed like the average hotel guest and pretending to be on the phone; or they take a seat in the lobby with a newspaper. Whenever an opportunity presents itself, they strike and steal a suitcase from a hotel guest. Ten minutes later they perform the same routine in a different hotel. Fifteen minutes later, it’s the same story, but in the city centre. The website allows us to put up photographs of the perpetrators, so I can see who committed a robbery in another hotel ten minutes ago.”From now on, professional criminals, rowdy rock bands and apparently upstanding gentlemen had better watch out when they want to rent a hotel room in Amsterdam , because – depending on the nature of their crime – their names will remain on the blacklist for a maximum of three years.