I am finishing 8 trips in 9 weeks, and last time I wrote of my “interesting” experience with a hotel smoke alarm. It was my first experience with a smoke alarm in a hotel, and it was caused by a software error.
So imagine my surprise when it happened a second time in 3 weeks. The second time it was real. Not serious (trivial really), but real. The second incident was caused by a person that lit a candle in their room. Somehow, the candle ignited a piece of paper, and (to the surprise of the candle burning guest) that activated the smoke alarm. I had to evacuate my hotel room AGAIN. Unlike last time where I had shampoo in my eyes, this time I was fully dressed and working on my laptop. But it was raining (and not just raining – it was absolutely pouring).
When I travel I do make a note of the fire exits, but after the shampoo incident I thoroughly check them out. And I had no trouble evacuating. On the way down the evacuation siren stopped, but not in time to stop me from having to go outside into heavy rain.
At the ground level, the hotel staff advised all guests they could return to their rooms as the fire was extinguished. It was here that staff told me about “candle person”. And unlike last time, I was impressed with the response of the hotel staff.
On hearing about candle person, I asked to speak to the manager (yes I was dripping wet, but I wanted to speak with the manager NOW). The manager was busy with the fire brigade, but I was told the manager would contact me when finished with the fire brigage. She did. She told me she would be contacting the employer of candle person, fining the employer (not fining candle person), and advising the employer that if this happened again, their staff would not be welcome at the hotel (and potentially other hotels – it is part of a global chain). I did not ask about the mechanism for fines, nor did I ask about the size of the fine.
It did get me thinking about the responsibility of corporations for their employees when the employees are travelling on company business. While I agree in principle with the response of the hotel, I have no idea if it is legal. I have many questions about this.
+ Does the hotel have the right to use the media (including social media) to describe the actions of the employee and name the offending company (not the offending person)?
+ Does the hotel have the right to charge the company the fine for having the fire brigade come to the hotel?
+ Did the manager have the right to tell me of her actions? By the way – I was not informed of the NAME of either candle person or the employer of candle person.
+ Does a person travelling on company business have different expectations than the same person travelling on personal business? And of course what happens when the trip is a mix of business and personal business?
Finally, I have come to the conclusion that candle person was not a terrorist, but was instead a person that made a silly mistake. Well, maybe silly is a bit too nice.