By Markus Späni, principal expert application, Siemens Building Technologies Division
Reputation is a fragile thing. Years of hard work building a successful business and providing good and efficient service to thousands of happy and thankful customers can be completely undermined in an instant by a single incident. To re-establish the same level of reputation may well take many years.
One example of such a damaging incident would be the outbreak of fire in a hotel. Even when nobody is hurt, a single incident where prevention measures fail and fire is known to have started can result in the complete erosion of trust so vital to guests staying under the hotel’s care.
Yet paradoxically, any occurrence of unwanted or ‘false’ alarms will irritate and alienate even the most reasonable guests when the alarms are eventually proven to be groundless, especially when they happen at night.
With so many different sorts of area which all need different levels of fire protection – guest rooms, kitchens, laundry and drying rooms, and plant rooms as examples – the problems involved in providing completely reliable fire protection within hotels are multi-faceted and complex.
Complete fire protection for hotels
The problems involved in providing comprehensive fire protection for hotels are complex. In short, to protect the guests and staff of any hotel throughout the day and night, along with the building itself, its reputation and its business continuity, it is necessary to put certain procedures in place: the regular cleaning, checking and maintenance of all appliances; the removal of flammable materials and the elimination of obstacles from stairways and all evacuation routes; the positioning of informative signs and notices keeping guests informed of restricted practices, alarms, practice drills and evacuation procedures; the siting of all types of relevant fire extinguishers; the keeping of all possible sources of ignition to an absolute minimum; the siting of manual call points throughout the hotel in all the appropriate places – along with the full and adequate training of all staff, both full-time and part-time.
It is vitally important for hotel owners and operators to utilise the protection of an early warning fire system which features intelligent detectors able to differentiate between the outbreak of fire and other, naturally occurring, deceptive phenomena.
For more see the October 2015 issue of AHCT
See: www.siemens.com/buildingtechnologies
