The Guests Who Are Asleep: Why Hotel Towers Change the Fire Watch Math at a Casino Resort

A gaming floor full of people at midnight is alert, loud and, for the most part, upright. A hotel tower at three in the morning is the opposite.

In hundreds of rooms, asleep are guests behind closed doors, some of them in a town that they do not know at all, having traversed the same floor just two times. They will wake up in panic in case of an alarm and rush to pick up a phone to locate the way to the stairs. 

This gap subtly influences the way a resort looks at security when no sprinklers are working. A casino property fire watch usually gets pictured as a person walking the slot floor, but on a property with a hotel attached, the sleeping floors carry just as much weight.

The risks are different. The warning signs are different. And the people being protected can’t be counted on to react quickly.

What’s Different Upstairs

The corridors in towers are long, narrow, and all alike. The doors all look the same whether you start at one end or the other. If the guest leaves a room after nightfall, he will have little time to decide which way to go.

Usually, towers are protected by:

• Sprinklers in rooms and corridors
• Fire-rated walls and self-closing doors
• Stairwells designed to stay clear of smoke
• Alarms and voice evacuation systems

When one package of sprinkler piping is shut off due to repair work, this package becomes less in volume, and all others have to carry more weight.

What Guest Rooms Add

Rooms come with their own fire load – mattresses, upholstered chairs, curtains, luggage, and whatever else accumulates from a few days’ absence from home. The guests use their chargers, styling equipment, and electric heaters during the cold season.

It is usually the housekeeping staff who are the first to realise this problem: a burned-out plug, a cord stretched under the bed, and so on. A single remark made during shift change will direct patrols toward certain floors.

What Can’t Be Seen From the Hallway

The smoke from the room fire travels through the gap between the floor and the bottom of the closed room door and along the elevator shafts. A patrol member who knows the building will spot things like:

• A door propped open with a luggage cart
• A stairwell door wedged open for a smoke break
• Room-service trays lining a corridor and slowing a crowd heading for the exit
• Trash piling up near ice machines and service closets

Patrol Rhythm After Dark

Overnight rounds on a casino property fire watch feel nothing like the gaming floor. It’s quiet, and guests aren’t supposed to notice anyone.

Patrol staff walk the corridors, check stairwells and electrical closets, and listen for anything unusual. A strong smell of burning plastic. A smoke detector chirping that nobody has answered.

They’re also checking the things guests never think about:

• Are exit signs lit?
• Do stairwell doors close properly?
• Is equipment like extinguishers located in the areas specified in the plan?

These verifications become more important if there is a failure in the sprinkler system since the entire building will be under increased load.

Why Communication Gets Harder

On a gaming floor, alarms are heard by several hundred people simultaneously. In the tower, the notification has to reach individuals sleeping and perhaps having difficulty with communication due to language barriers or a health condition.

Most properties handle this with voice evacuation systems and floor wardens. Those only work if the staff know what’s going on.

That’s why interim patrols coordinate closely with the front desk and security. Anyone who gets a call from a worried guest should know what to say, and who to send.

Hotel staff are a useful extra pair of eyes:

• Housekeepers walk every corridor daily
• Front desk agents hear complaints about smells and noises
• Engineers know which rooms have a history of problems

A five-minute huddle before an impaired area starts allows for communication of that information both ways.

The Paperwork Follows the People

In case the impaired area includes floors where people sleep, inspections and insurance companies will probably raise some more questions, and much earlier. These are the common questions:

• What floors are impaired?
• How many rooms are occupied?
• What is the overnight inspection schedule?
• What will happen if guests are notified in case of a problem?

Having all that information on paper, along with the time-stamped logs of each round of inspection, helps to have a better discussion.

Some places will restrict the occupancy of impaired floors during the repair work and move the guests to another area of the building. It means a slight loss of money, but it decreases the number of people who have to leave the impaired area.

Putting It Together

At the end of the day, when you put gaming and hoteling under one roof, you get two buildings, each with its own flow.

The casino floor is busy and loud. The tower is quiet and full of people unaware of the importance of what’s going on around them.

Temporary coverage that considers both realities, with hourly adjustments