Last Thursday, Stephen Paddock checked into a $500 suite at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas.
Now, Mandalay Bay is irrevocably linked to the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history, after Paddock opened fire on a crowd of 22,000 people from the window of his hotel room.
He killed 58 people and wounded nearly 500, police say.
Often, sites of tragedies become an area of mourning and remembrance. However, the room on the 32nd floor where Paddock executed his killing spree is unlikely to become so.
"From my opinion, the room disappears," Anthony Melchiorri, host of Travel Channel's "Hotel Impossible," told Business Insider.
Melchiorri said if he were running the hotel, he would reach out to victims and their families to see how he could best help them.
Then, the room in question — which has been identified as room 135 on the 32nd floor — would likely "disappear" and no longer be available for guests to book. Melchiorri said he would go so far as to have the doors sealed up, removing any trace of the suite's existence.
Deanna Ting, hospitality editor at travel industry intelligence company Skift, agreed that the room would probably not be available to be booked — at least for a very long time.
Beyond the room in question, both Ting and Melchiorri emphasized the importance of Mandalay Bay reestablishing the hotel as a safe and secure space for guests.
Housekeeping and other members of staff will be retrained to say something if they see something suspicious. Ting predicts that a very visible security presence — such as metal detectors, X-ray machines, and armed guards — will likely flood Vegas hotels, at least in the short term.
Las Vegas hotels already have some of the best security in the country, with Melchiorri saying it has "more security per square foot" than any other city in the US.
Debra DeShong, a spokesperson for Mandalay Bay's parent company, MGM Resorts, told Business Insider in a statement that the company "works consistently with local and national law enforcement agencies to keep procedures at our resorts up to date, and are always improving and evolving."
However, for Mandalay Bay and other hotels in Las Vegas to convince guests of their safety, drastic and visible changes will be necessary.
This was a fascinating read. Experiences like this are always intriguing because they sit somewhere between science, psychology, and personal perception. Whether there's a logical explanation or not, stories like these certainly make you think. In a similar way, academic research often involves investigating complex questions and evaluating evidence carefully, which is why many postgraduate students look for masters thesis help when working through challenging research topics and large amounts of information.
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