Radisson Blue Hotels and Resorts has taken the perhaps unusual step of publicly announcing the installation of a system to prevent hotel guests from accessing child pornography via the web.
While some organisations would quietly install the software - in this case provided by NetClean Technologies - on its systems, Radisson Blue has run PR to support the project at its Scandinavia Hotel in Gothenburg.
The hotel group says it will eventually roll out the NetClean Child Abuse Free Zone technology on the guest computer network around its chain of 235 hotels in Europe, Middle East and Africa.
Radisson insists the move is not in response to any particular incident.
NetClean CEO Christian Sjöberg says:
"We are delighted that such an influential hotel as Radisson Blu Scandinavia has chosen to take a stand on this issue and we hope that many others will follow their example.
“We are on a mission to stamp out child sexual abuse images wherever they exist – on the internet and on any other form of storage. Many collectors of child abuse images carry the images with them when they go away on business or on holiday.
NetClean CEO Christian Sjöberg says:
"We are on a mission to stamp out child sexual abuse images wherever they exist – on the internet and on any other form of storage. Many collectors of child abuse images carry the images with them when they go away on business or on holiday."
"Organisations need to protect against this – no business wants to be portrayed as careless or indifferent about their networks being used to allow child abuse images to be viewed or passed around."
Despite the unusual and often highly taboo nature surrounding the issue, NetClean's system and Radisson's public stance on the problem highlights an ongoing and important area for hotels and other accommodation providers to consider when offering computer networks and web access.
In some countries a web access provider, including a business location or wi-fi host, can be liable for allowing such material to be passed through its network.