Hotels, restaurants, casinos and resorts are notoriously desirable targets for thieves and con artists, mainly because of the large sums of cash flowing through these businesses. And, indeed, statistics do show that theft and fraud take a serious financial toll on the bottom lines of most hospitality entities. According to industry statistics, as much as 5% of annual food and beverage revenue is lost to fraud by hospitality companies.

The good news is that there is a lot that hotel management can do to prevent and detect illegal activity that they're not doing now.

Whether it's guests paying cash for rooms or restaurant and bar patrons paying for meals with cash, without strict controls on how that cash is handled...and by whom...and clear policies on what constitutes theft and fraud and what the consequences are of getting caught, dishonest employees will exploit management's lax controls by, among other things...

First Things First

With so many ways for employees to steal, there is no getting around the fact that formulating and enforcing a stringent employee anti-fraud policy is step one in the challenge of safeguarding your property's assets.

According to accountant, Andrew Durant of BDO Stoy Hayward in London, "The aim of a corporate [anti-fraud] policy ...