Best Practice for Handling Utility Outages
Recent severe weather events have resulted in serious hurricanes, tropical storms, heavy snowfalls, strong hurricane-force winds and widespread storm surges and flooding. During many of these events, municipal power supplies have been knocked out, forcing residents and businesses, including hotels, to rely on emergency generators to provide electricity.
Even more than a sense of comfort and style, the quality of the welcome, or even the level of service, hotel guests want to feel safe and secure in their hotel. It enables them to settle into unfamiliar surroundings and enjoy the experience without anxiety. It is a feeling they should be able to take for granted.
The hotel operator must take this responsibility seriously and understand that this concern knows no international boundaries. It is an important part of a hotel’s duty of care. To ensure this sense of security, hotels must observe their local and national regulations, but be ready to go beyond these rules, incorporating the latest and best international practices.
Emergency generators are installed in hotels to prevent hazards associated with loss of municipal electric power supplies. The reliability of electric power supplies for Fire and Life Safety systems is critical.
In a hotel, the automatic power transfer switches that transfer the electricity source to the emergency generator, must be timed to provide electric power to fire and life safety loads within 10 seconds and to standby loads within 60 seconds of loss of municipal power supply. The life safety loads include:
Click here to read more.
Source: Ranjit Gunewardane (2013). Ensuring Guest Safety in Hotels, Hotel Solutions?http://www.hotelsolutionspartnership.com/Blog_detail_61_Ensuring-Guest-Safety-in-Hotels/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=The+Hotel+Solutions+Partnership+Ltd&utm_campaign=2417470_hotelmatters+-+Ranjit+Gunewardane+-+Ensuring+Guest+Safety+in+Hotels&utm_content=Continue&dm_i=1HEK,1FTBY,7P3711,4VSPF,1 published Apr 24, 2013. Viewed Apr 25, 2013,