TOP STORY: HB motels wage war on cheats

LAWRENCE GULLERY A website to help retailers track convicted shoplifters could also be used to curb motel "sleep-and-runners" in Hawke's Bay, a crime costing local operators $400 to $500 a month.
And the on-going problem has forced leaders in the motel industry to a change of policy in which visitors have to pay up front, rather than on departure.
Hastings Moteliers' Association president Esther Seymour said it was a "year-round" problem. Each month, motels in Hastings and Napier reported about four incidents in which visitors had left without paying their bill.
"Most of them leave about four or five in the morning.
"They give false details or try to come up with plausible reasons why they had to leave early," she said.
"In most cases it's couples, or singles, but not families, and they seem to target three-star accommodation, I'm not sure why.
"Sometimes they turn up with stolen vehicles, that's the other sort of runner; they're on the run from the police and give false names," Mrs Seymour said.
The website developer of Shared Faces, a database programme that lists pictures of convicted shop lifters, visited Hastings retailers last week to show how the site worked.
Businesses that subscribe have access to a national database, and already supermarkets such as Hastings' Pak'nSave are sharing images of known shoplifters.
The developer, Palmerston North's Scott Newland, said Hastings retailers showed an interest in subscribing, including one motelier.
"We will be trialling that (at the motel) within the next week or so and giving him a chance (the motelier) to use the system," he said.
Mrs Seymour, who also runs Cumberland Court Motel in Hastings, said motels in Napier and Hastings had their own e-mail and telephone network but a web database would be a first for those 60 members in the association.
She said, however, that some in the motel business missed out altogether because they were not part of the association, making it difficult to pinpoint the exact number of sleep-and-run incidents.
"Moteliers are a pretty trusting lot, we don't often ask visitors to pay up front," she said.
New Zealand Moteliers' Association chief executive Michael Daines said, however, that the days of guests paying on the way out were over.
"We are going to see that change, (paying up front) is something we are advising our members to do. "At the moment it's about 50-50," he said.
"Sleep and runners are a problem to the industry; it hurts moteliers because they are a small business. It can't be written off, it is a loss, it hurts those businesses in the pocket," Mr Daines said.
Association members were already using a similar Australasian website to track sleep and runners between New Zealand and Australia, he said.