Red Or Green Lights Above Your Hotel Room Door Tell Anyone Walking By If You’re Inside

A guest walked down the hallway to their room at a Hilton in Cancun filming the doors. Above each one there’s a small LED that’s either red or green, and she keeps panning from door to door to show the pattern.

She asks whether the lights are being used to tell when people are inside their rooms? And she says that idea “doesn’t feel great.”

Several properties have these lights above guestrooms that indicate whether anyone is inside, as a flag to staff who might attempt housekeeping or minibar restocking. For instance there are reports of it at:

• Hilton Tulum Riviera Maya All-Inclusive Resort (here, here)
  
• Hilton Cancun (here)
  
• Valentin Imperial Maya — Playa del Carmen (here)

@bustersfanjulie I haven’t noticed this at other hotels. Have you? #hotel #travel #lights #tracking @hilton ♬ original sound – Julie W

The way this works is several things are being detected generally: door contact (open or closed state); presence detection (motion, sometimes heat); keycard holder state (in markets where that’s used to allow electricity to turn on); timeout rules (e.g., “no presence detected for a certain number of minutes after door closes”).

For instance, Legrand’s system describes occupancy status updating in the corridor display, and “absence of occupancy” conditions like keycard removed or no presence detected after closing the door.

I do not like this system at all.

Solo female ‘guest present’. That means potential victim is available.

• Guest ‘away from room’. That means the room is ripe for the pickings.

A better practice than an indicator light outside the guest room door would be to use the factors to determine guest presence for a housekeeping or hotel management dashboard that shows occupied and empty rooms, rather than displaying occupancy status publicly in front of each room.

Of course, a housekeeper doesn’t need the indicator to do bad things, since they can just enter and apologize if the room is occupied. The world’s dumbest housekeeper at MGM’s Vdara Las Vegas stole over $1 million in jewelry from a guest room using her own key card to enter, then called someone in prison (recorded call) to talk over doing the crime. She left the bed half-made and left cleaning supplies behind. Don’t get life advice from someone who’s in prison (since they’ve already proven that they get caught!). She called the inmate several times after doing the crime.

I do like guest-controlled do not disturb corridor indicators, which are a digital replacement for door hangars. Those are great. Door hangars fall down. The guest remains in control.