The government will ask the management of hotels to preserve information about local and foreign guests at least for a certain period so that suspects can be identified following any incident, said a Home Ministry official.
He said the government is making the move after a number of criminal offences that took place in hotel rooms in the city in recent months.
The official said two most recent incidents--robbery at the locker rooms of BRAC Bank Ltd and fire incident in Hotel Orchard--in the capital were matters of great concern for the government.
"The government move aims to curb criminal incidents in the city. Many criminals use hotel rooms to prepare for their operations," a Criminal Investigation Department (CID) official said.
A senior Home Ministry official said: "We are going to make it mandatory on the part of management of hotels to preserve information about guests for a certain period."
Referring to the robbery incident at BRAC Bank branch in the capital city, the official said: "We had information that the robbers had stayed at a hotel to make their plan, and left the hotel after committing the robbery in the locker room of the bank."
"We found it difficult to identify the criminals as the information they provided to the hotel was false," he added.
The official said it was observed that most of the time investigators could not proceed as information of guests at hotels were not properly protected.
Against this backdrop, he said: "We are taking the measure after holding a series of meetings with officials of hotel and restaurant operators."
Apparently, there is no objection from the operators' end to introducing such a new system, the official said.
"We had a meeting with officials of the special branch where there was a discussion on use of information technology (IT) in collection and preservation of guests' personal information," ABM Shamsuddoha, head of Safety and Security of Westin Dhaka, told the FE recently.
Officials said the hotel operators will require to collect some 24 kinds of information of any guest and preserve those in computers.
Apart from this, the hotel management might be asked to take photograph of every guest and preserve it for a month for security reasons.
The hotel guests will have to write down their names, parents' names, permanent addresses, mobile and land phone numbers, passport numbers, national identity cards and voter identity card numbers (if any), driving licence and professional ID numbers (if any) when the new order of government comes into force.
The hotel authorities will also be required to verify whether the mobile and land phone numbers supplied by a boarder are genuine.
