In this article, Alex MacArthur, director at North West Fire Solutions, outlines the various fire safety risks in hotels, what a hotel fire risk assessment will look at, and more.
What does the law say in relation to fire risk assessments for hotels?
The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 doesn’t specifically mention hotels, but it applies to all types of premises, which include hotels.
Hotels need to have a suitable and sufficient fire risk assessment in place, which must be reviewed regularly.
What are the typical fire safety risks within hotels?
Hotels come in all shapes and sizes, and there are often many different things happening within them.
A hotel contains many facilities, from catering to event spaces, and often hosts different types of leisure activities.
Lots of people come and go within hotels, and not just guests but also contractors and staff. A hotel also experiences frequent staff changes due to its 24/7 operation.
Because of the footfall within a hotel, its fire doors are subjected to a higher than normal amount of wear and tear. This is another potential risk, as fire doors are a key part of compartmentation and prevent the spread of fire within premises.
Of course, the big risk within a hotel is that it’s sleeping accommodation, and not just sleeping accommodation—unfamiliar sleeping accommodation.
The people who go to bed in a hotel are potentially going to be woken up in the middle of the night while a fire is occurring and be instructed to evacuate but not have a clue where to go.
There’s a lot of opportunity for things to go wrong, so it’s really important that all fire safety risks are considered in great detail before a fire happens. Taking these risks into account will allow you to completely mitigate and remove them where possible.
Plus, as anyone who reads this and has a background in the hotel industry will appreciate, people who stay in hotels can do crazy things! There are many instances of people partying in hotels and taking all kinds of toxic substances, which further enhances the level of fire risk within the building.
We could talk forever about the potential fire risks within hotels, but in short there’s a lot for hotel operators to consider.
How do hotel fire risk assessments differ from those conducted in other types of commercial properties?
Again, hotels are typically very complex buildings. Really small hotels & AirBnBs can be quite, quite simple and straightforward, and larger hotels less so.
But essentially, the fire assessment process is the same for a hotel as it would be for any other type of premises. The assessor will attend the site, do a physical site inspection, and look for hazards that would need to be managed in some way to mitigate or remove the risk of fire.
A hotel fire risk assessment is no different to any other type of fire risk assessment. The most important factors are the complexity of the site and making sure the assessor understands how the site is used.
For example, a country house hotel could have lots of outbuildings that need to be considered. In older buildings that have been converted into hotels, the construction might not be as good as in some modern hotels.
There are so many points to consider within a hotel risk assessment, but it depends on the site specifics.
What does a hotel fire risk assessment involve?
When an assessor attends your hotel, they will look at your policies and evacuation strategies to ensure:
- The site is being managed properly.
- The risk of fire is minimised as much as possible.
- Everybody knows what to do and where to go in the event of a fire.
The assessor will also look at your maintenance records and whether or not the site is being maintained correctly (for example, the electrics and lighting).
Fire drills will be looked at as well. It’s all too easy for hotels to have a drill in the middle of the day, because it’s the most convenient time of day, but you’ve got to consider the staff who are working at night and could miss out on important explanations. Everybody in a hotel needs to be trained on how to respond in the event of a fire.
Ensuring fire safety can be a big undertaking, particularly for larger hotels, but it’s worth investing in and doing properly. That makes the fire risk assessment process so much easier, as there are fewer issues on site, and the assessor gets the impression that your hotel is well managed from a fire safety perspective.
Why is a fire risk assessment so important for hotels?
The easy answer here is because they need one by law.
But, again, as hotels are complex sites, the potential for loss of life in the event of fires is quite high if fire safety is not managed properly.
Should a fire break out, you wouldn’t want it to result in an injury or loss of life.
But, of course, we don’t just carry out fire risk assessments for the purpose of life safety and preventing people from getting hurt. There’s a business in play here, too.
If you own a hotel, that’s your business and livelihood, and you obviously want your business to exist, so if there is a fire, you want it to be kept to a minimum or prevented entirely.
It goes without saying that if you’re responsible for a hotel in any shape or form, you need to be on top of your fire safety.
A cautionary tale of hotel fire safety
We recently carried out a fire risk assessment for a hotel that was being used to house asylum seekers who had effectively been living there for quite some time. It’s not like when you go on holiday with a small suitcase and you’re in and out within a short space of time.
Because these people lived in the hotel, they had started to build up a few things. For instance, there were microwaves in bedrooms, and a couple of residents were charging electric scooters in their rooms. This is a risk, particularly when you consider these scooters were being charged overnight.
We picked up on this when doing the fire risk assessment and recommended that the hotel didn’t have these scooters on site. The scooters were subsequently removed from the building and charged elsewhere.
We also advised the hotel to improve its safety policies to reflect how these residents are living and what kind of things they’re doing. We reminded them of the importance of being more careful.
A couple of months after we did the assessment, one of the scooter batteries exploded, and a fire broke out. Luckily, we picked up on it, and the assessor did a good job, but the client didn’t act quickly enough.
This is a classic case of a hotel not being used as it should be. It can be difficult for responsible people within hotels to fully appreciate all of the fire safety risks within their building, but you still have to do things correctly.
Don’t leave your hotel unprepared for fire
You’ll keep your hotel and its occupants safe by working with our team of qualified, competent risk assessors.
We’ve done plenty of fire risk assessments for hotels and have a wealth of experience in detecting different issues.
North West Fire Solutions has existed for almost 15 years at the time of writing and is accredited by the Fire Industry Association, the UK’s largest fire protection trade association.
In summary, our team knows what a hotel fire risk assessment should include.
To arrange for us to visit your hotel, reach out to us at 0151 665 0124 or email info@nwfiresolutions.co.uk.