Adults & Minors in Hotel Rooms

Factual Questions
1

A little background:
I’m currently helping out with a multi-day event. As a perk to the staff, we bought out a block of rooms at a hotel and are offering the rooms at a discounted rate to these staffers.

We have much more staff than we do rooms, so it was decided to split each room into quarters. This helps the staff - they could pay only 1/4 of the rate and still get somewhere to sleep - and it has the potential to increase the staff/room ratio. After all, if they’re willing, getting 40 staff into 10 rooms is better than 10 staff into 10 rooms.

Obviously there will be at least a little bit of automated pairing-up happening. For example, if a group wants a room and the only two rooms available are half-full, it makes sense to put those halves together to make a room for this new group.

So, the problem:
Under this scheme, it’s possible that a minor could wind up getting shuffled into the same room as an adult. E.g., an 18-year-old girl could reserve 2/4 of a room for herself and her younger sister, a minor. Meanwhile, two adult males could likewise reserve 2/4 of a room. It’s possible, then, that these adult males could be shifted into the same room as the young girl. And that’s freaking people out who are planning this.

But does this pose a problem from a liability standpoint? I would assume - for this example - that the 18-year-old girl would be responsible for her sister. Am I wrong - do we need to take every possible step to keep minors and non-parental/non-guardian adults out of the same room?

2

I would say, yes, you do need to be careful of how you group people. I wouldn’t put adults of the opposite sex with minors if they weren’t related. IANAL, but I would think that it’s opening yourself up to some nasty allegations if you do allow your theorized scenario to happen.

3

Obviously keeping minors together with their respective guardians for the trip is of prime importance. Aside form that I would advise that you try to pair up young girls with older females, I think that an 18 year old girl would be more at ease sharing a room with middle-aged women than middle-aged men.

4

Really.

Either put me in a room with three 16 year old hotties, or I’m buying my own.

5

I’m a single woman who has agreed to share hotel rooms with male colleagues, both single and married, on a few occasions while traveling on business. I’ve also been on a lot of field trips with groups in which rooming assignments were made by the trip coordinators. Given past experiences, I have to say:

There is no way that I would group any members of the opposite sex in the same room unless you had a written request or approval for that grouping.

I think it’s pretty obvious that members of the opposite sex should not be in rooms where minors are present (e.g., the example you gave in the OP), although adults of the same sex would be okay. But you also need to consider that with 40 people, you might well have a range of perspectives/levels of comfort with respect to sharing “personal space” with members of the opposite sex. Also, if you have married people who will be attending this event sans spouse, you need to be sensitive to the fact that some spouses will fly off the handle if they discover hubby/wife is to be sharing a room with women/men. And you really don’t want to make the process of getting rooms sorted out to be a source of embarrassment for anyone by later having to (publicly) re-arrange accommodations for their comfort.

I find it more interesting that you think you could fit four adult males into one hotel room (presumably a double?). If they are anything like a lot of the guys I know, two of them are going to be sleeping on the floor unless you have cots brought in. :stuck_out_tongue:

6

The best way to reduce your liability is to group people into 4 classes, and only group tegether in rooms people from from the same class:

  1. 18+ male
  2. <18 male
  3. 18+ female
  4. <18 female
7

I would think that maybe the underage kids might need an adult chaperone, in which case it would be necessary to have one adult (of the same gender) per room that has minors in it.

8

A chaperone is a good idea, as you’re not safe just in grouping minors of the same gender. There was an article in the newspaper a few weeks ago about how airlines handle unaccompanied minors, and it mentioned an incident in which two minor boys were roomed together overnight due to a weather delay and in which the younger boy was molested by the older one. It might help if you got a liability waiver signed by the parents or guardian but even then you might still get sued if something bad happened.

9

And good thing they are freaked out. They well should be. Is your company out of their collective minds to even consider this arrangement?

You are making a huge mistake by pairing people up without regard to their age or sex. If I were your company, there is NO WAY IN HELL that I would put adults in rooms with unrelated minors. No matter what sex any party is, unless you have a written request by the parents of the minor AND a written agreement to the arrangement by the adult. Even then I wouldn’t do it, unless the persons were related. Frankly if I were an adult male, I would never agree in this day and age to share a room with an unknown unrelated minor. I’d just be covering my own ass.

I can’t believe you or the company even have to ask this! Sorry but I am just dumbfounded here.

10

Okay, I’ve just re-read the OP, and something else popped out at me. Please correct me if I’ve misunderstood anything.

  • Your company was hired to provide staff at a multi-day event, which is far enough from home and/or requires staffing for so much of the day that it makes more sense to have the staff stay on-site rather than commute.

  • Despite the fact that staying on-site overnight is a management call, you are asking your employees to foot the bill for their rooms.

I have to say - huh?

If it’s management’s decision to have people stay overnight, the cost of their hotel rooms should have been included in the bill to your client. It’s no “perk” to have to shell out money to make money, at the level of staffer. How many hours would they need to work to cover the cost of their rooms? If for some reason it’s absolutely impossible for the company to pay for the room, then the staffers involved should have been given the opportunity to decide whether they wanted to share with one person or three (and with whom), or try commuting anyway.

(On a side note, putting four people in one room when all four have to be up, showered and dressed for work at approximately the same time is a royal pain.)

I’m also guessing that the minors you’re talking about are employees that happen to have older siblings that are employees. If not, then I have no idea why minors would be allowed to come along at all. If the company has sufficient numbers of staff that are of age, maybe it ought to consider leaving the underage ones at home.

In any event, no mixing of the two sexes unless everyone affected agrees. An extra hotel room or two is a heckuva lot cheaper than the lawsuits that might ensue if people are unhappy.

11

Onlyif the minors were females. From what I have known, adult males are more likely to be a molestation worry with young boys than adult women would be.

12

Oh my goodness…

As one who has to make travel arrangements for minors fairly often (school band director), that’s about all I can say.

First of all, sometimes I have to take a trip with a single student. There is no way in heck that he and I will stay in the same room. Never. Not ever. Cost is not an issue. It will never, never, NEVER, happen. If the principal tells me to make it happen, I will stay home.

The only possible exception would be if I were travelling for school with my own daughter (which does happen). Still, she has much more fun staying in a room with her friends. I have much more fun with her staying in a room with her friends.

So, CynicalGabe, in my opinion, has it right. Group the youngsters together according to sex. They are probably already used to rooming with folks anyway. They do it for school trips, camps, college, whatever. It’s usually not a big deal.

As for grown ups, I’d lump them together too, according to sex. I’d also drop the room population down to two per room. Men aren’t usually comfortable sharing a bed with another guy. Women take a long time in the bathroom. (Yes, I know these are generalizations, but deal.)

If you’ve got folks of different sexes who want to room together, tell them to go order their own room. This is a working trip, so hanky-panky isn’t on the agenda. They can stand to sleep apart for a night.

Good luck.

13

Your own room or your own hotties?

14

Four in a room is a LOT of people. Why the company isn’t paying for this for their staff is unknown to me. How the employees are accepting, or are expected to accept, being lumped with various people through no choice of their own - FOUR to a room, no less - is also a mystery. The whole thing sounds very weird.

I’m female and I’m not comfortable sharing a bed with some other random female either. In fact I can’t imagine doing it except to conserve heat in the event we had crashed into a mountain in the Andes.

Also, being female, there is NO WAY that I’d let my employer pick out some random man for me to room with. WTF??? I’m sorry again but are you guys insane? What kind of company is this???

15

I’d have to agree with everyone else who says “WTF?” Who in their right mind agrees to stay in a hotel room with three other potential strangers, some of which may be of the opposite sex? Honestly, I won’t willingly share a room with anyone, and haven’t since I was a teenager. Even if the minor issue was not part of this plan, I’d say it was a very poor plan at best. Add in the whole minor bit, and it’s crazy.

16

I got the impression that this wasn’t a corporate event, but some sort of club or activity, like an SF convention. In any case, perhaps the OP might instead announce that the discounted rooms are available and let people book them on their own, so they can work out their own arrangements for sharing.

17

Further potential complication: Suppose you have a man travelling with his minor daughter, or a woman travelling with her minor son. Either of these would be a reasonable pair to room together, if the parent and child were both willing. But whom could you possible put into the same room with them? Other than other family members (of which there might not be any on this trip), I’m not seeing any workable arrangements.

Make it two to a room, and restrict any minor/adult or minor/minor of opposite sex pairings to immediate family members (siblings, parents, children). You might possibly allow adult/adult of opposite sex, but only on the request of both adults. Anything beyond that is just asking for trouble.

18

It sounds to me that TonyF is helping to run, as someone mentioned, a convention of sorts. If this is a fan event, then it makes sense that the “staffers” would be unpaid volunteers. There may not be a “company” to pay expenses at all. TonyF, perhaps you could revisit your thread and fill us in?

19

Wow. I wasn’t expecting so many replies! Thanks. This all pretty much answers my question.

Let me see if I can answer everyone’s questions.

This is, in fact, a fan convention. iwakura43 got it. We’re a diverse bunch of volunteers from all over who get together to put on a show. There’s no money in the budget to pay for hotel rooms - and there are too many staff anyway.

In years past we’ve had shared “crash space” - basically a hotel room or two to catch some rest and a shower. Open to anyone on staff regardless of age or sex. This grew naturally from informal arrangements over the years… but it’s pretty clear that this won’t work anymore (or at least it’s getting pretty stupid to do).

Signing up for a room and sharing the room with others is entirely optional; you don’t have to get one, and if you do, you can buy the whole room. I’m only bringing up the issue in the chance that a reservation containing a minor only takes up a fraction of the room.

I guess the question could have been: if the minors have an accompanying adult, is it ok to room them with other adults? I see a little bit of a gray area there… and that’s why I asked. :smiley:

So to answer the overall theme of

… this could only happen if they decided to get a fraction of the room - either because they want to share a room, or because they don’t want to pay for the entire room.

20

First, what you originally said was that the company, or club, or whatever it is that you call it, was putting people together without their having any choice about it. Or at least, that’s how it sounded. You had said, "Obviously there will be at least a little bit of automated pairing-up happening. For example, if a group wants a room and the only two rooms available are half-full, it makes sense to put those halves together to make a room for this new group. " To me that sounded like YOU (the group) were moving people into whatever rooms were only partially filled in order to have more space for others.

Now you are saying that one person can book an entire room for himself, if he wants to. “Signing up for a room and sharing the room with others is entirely optional; you don’t have to get one, and if you do, you can buy the whole room.” This to me says that you, the group, are NOT lumping people together. So there is no automated pairing up, at least none that has anything to do with the group, since the people are matching themselves up. Right?

If the staff are paying for these rooms, you (the group) don’t have to be involved at all. You reserved a block of rooms. Tell the staff that there are X rooms available and they cost reduced rates of $Y. If one person wants an entire room for himself, he can have it and pay for it. If Sally and her little sister want, ON THEIR OWN, to arrange to share a room with Mark and Dave, you (the group) have nothing to do with it. Where you are getting into trouble, possibility liability, and downright weirdness is for the group to match people without regard to age or sex. I can’t see how two private parties making their own arrangements to stay together has anything to do with the group. Who stays in them is none of your business and you have no business knowing who is staying with whom, since you have nothing at all to do with who is in what room. All the group did was reserve a block of rooms.

If you’re going to get involved in assigning rooms, or matching people, or calling these rooms “staff housing during the convention,” then you better stay far, far away from forcing people to room with random other people.

You should check with the hotel too. I’ve never stayed in one that allowed four people to stay in a room for the same price as one or two.