Fire safety begins where awareness lives
Emergencies are unpredictable. Fires, floods, medical events, violence — they don’t give warnings. But your response can still be predictable: fast, effective, life-saving. That only happens if you drill and stop treating emergency preparedness as a box to tick and start treating it as the difference between chaos and control. Businesses that ignore this reality are playing with fire.
What do you do in the event of a fire alarm at a restaurant or hotel? It seems like a simple answer. You evacuate the building! Well okay, that’s what you’re supposed to do, but that’s not what always happens in real life. Here’s the reality: in an emergency, in most cases employees don’t level up the hotel’s plan - they fall to the level of its training. And if the hotel drills are just half-hearted walk-throughs or paperwork exercises, the staff won’t be ready when it counts.
Fire alarms often are considered the most critical element of a hotel's safety system. When an alarm sounds, the occupants immediately know a potential danger exists and evacuation is necessary. Hence, the behaviour of staff in a fire emergency can have a profound impact on the safety of occupants. Inappropriate staff response could even induce long evacuation delays with catastrophic consequences.
Too often, compliance in hospitality becomes a set of tasks; reports to file and boxes to tick instead of a shared mindset. And that mindset gap quietly erodes safety, and trust long before any incident occurs. The best hotels don’t chase compliance deadlines, they live compliance daily.
Recently, whilst having breakfast at a high-rise beach resort hotel, a piercingly high-decibel tone alarm suddenly came on without pause. Initially, the high sensory stimuli caused most everyone – guests and staff alike, to freeze in bewilderment. A few guests showed signs of a nonchalant attitude, completely ignoring the signal. Others anxiously looked closely at those around them. Seeing some individuals remaining seated, many stayed rooted to their seats. What was equally astonishing was the reaction of the hotel staff. The cooks at the action stations simply looked at each other. The serving staff stood motionless. The restaurant supervisor was on the phone.
Contrary to their training (if any), they did not respond immediately by evacuating the guests but appeared to first await confirmation of the need to evacuate. I am sure that if one table at that restaurant or the waiters had got up to leave and made sure the people around them knew they were evacuating due to the fire alarm, more people would have followed. People are social animals and tend to follow others when led in the right direction, (or in the wrong direction).
That’s all the more reason why practice fire drills are necessary. Every fire drill, every safety briefing, and every signage around the hotel is not just a formality — it’s training for life. We never know when a situation may arise, but being prepared means we can respond effectively and confidently.
The frequency of fire drills depends on several separate things. The first is what the local fire code requires – which at minimum, requires drills to be held annually, but high-risk workplaces or those with frequent changes (staff turnover, new layouts, and new hazards) should practice more often.
Two patterns stand out. First, safety is emerging as a conversion lever rather than a compliance requirement. Secondly, across hotels and destinations, “Safety & Support” consistently appears as the largest unmet need – particularly in how it is communicated and delivered.
Shafeek Wahab – Editor, Hospitality Sri Lanka, Consultant, Trainer, Motivational Speaker, Mystery Guest Auditor, Ex-Hotelier
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