The Interview: Safe as hotels
Issue 28 - Mar 2007

Safety and security systems are priorities for guests and hoteliers alike. Dennis Oldfield, General Manager, Accor Hotels, India talks to RFP about the opportunities and challenges presented by implementing these systems in one of the hottest hospitality markets in Asia.

Fifteen years ago, in the early nineties, when Dennis Oldfield was based in China he was fortunate to be a part of the burgeoning hospitality market there. Now he considers himself to be doubly lucky to be going through
the same exciting period in India, where luxury, business and budget hotels “cannot be built fast enough” to meet rising demand, and Accor is also actively pursuing other management opportunities around the sub-continent.
However, he admits, even though brands under his purview, such as the globally recognised Ibis, Novotel and Sofitel chains, are both building and acquiring as fast as they are able, he still turns away more opportunities than he is presented with.

One area that he is particularly conscious of is building safety and security, and the need to develop systems and infrastructure that will be effective if an incident occurs while not confusing or alarming guests for the remainder of the time. There are a great number of potential incidents and listing them all for guests may simply “scare the dickens out of them”. For that reason, in a hotel natural disasters or other incidents that require evacuation or special
management of the premesis are the subjects of internal management. Guests are only told what they need to know and the hotel relies far more on
well-trained staff.

Oldfield explains that there are two sides to security planning in a hotel environment. The first is the technical side, which engineers, architects and technicians need to be aware of and that is part of the structure of the building. This includes building management systems (BMS) and the other hardware in the building that is created to record, recognise and react to particular incidents. communication to guests: staff The other side is the “software”, the staff whose job it is to know what to do in case of emergency. That staff know the property well is extremely important, because guests are generally only staying in the facility for a limited period of time, so staff must be able to react and guide them. In this way staff have multiple roles of providing not only service and comfort but also safety and control. Accor overcome the challenges this raises through comprehensive training closely tied to the physical infrastructure of the specific site but following set safety and security systems and processes applicable worldwide. On the Accor intranet there are numerous guidelines and documentation where general managers, chief engineers and safety officers can access material about company policy and procedure. This material is then used as the foundation for training programs and updates. For example, there was an earthquake in Indonesia that affected some builings last year. Accor hotel staff completed all the procedures that were required and executed a very smooth evacuation as a result of global standard training.

Another challenge is the fact that a hotel is a 24/7 operation, because “disasters can happen at any time”. In other types of facilities, such as offices, the number of people occupying the space peaks during the day, whereas in hotels, due to the nature of the facility peak occupation is at night. There are positive aspects to these hours but there are also challenges, particularly from a staffing perspective as the number of staff varies over the 24 hour period.

What staff need to know and the processes that are implemented varies from location to location and building to building. A low-rise building and a high-rise building requires different procedures, even if both are located in earthquake prone locations. Different types of planning are also required for buildings that are for example, surrounded by water (typhoon), close to an airport or other physical requirements. The differences in training are less cultural but more specific to the environment of that place.

communicating to guests: signs
The physical design of each building varies and signage therefore cannot be completely standardised. Even though Accor has an internal standard about signage, regulations or guest demographic will mean having to review the requirements from location to location. The number of languages of the signage is obviously a consideration. For example, generally emergency and
other signage will be in English everywhere, though in some locations, such as Hong Kong, dual signage is required. Particular hotels require more explanatory material in a number of languages due to the existing or anticipated origins of guests. For example the emergency exit route plan generally located on the back of room doors might be in one, two or up to four
different languages, such as English, Japanese and Korean. English will be standard in all hotel rooms and it is Accor’s policy that regardless of internal regulations signage must meet or exceed local health and safety regulations.

hardware in place
Technology plays a part in and has improved the safety management planning process, and in the opinion of Oldfield, has improved the guest experience as well. For example, electric locking systems for doors have made an improvement to room security allowing whole floors or parts of floors to be isolated for guests with exceptional security requirements. The ability to broadcast messages to the entire facility helps to communicate messages and instructions in the event of an emergency, is another benefit to guests.

Often nowadays the messaging system is controlled by the BMS, the development of which has also created other safety enhancing features, says Oldfeild. Through building system integration, control systems for lifts interact with the security systems so that certain safety or security events activate one system or trigger
a sensor, the lift will automatically abort its programmed course and move to the bottom of the shaft, exiting any lift passengers there and not moving until systems are returned to normal. This has the combined benefit of evacuating the building more efficiently and stopping people on higher floors trying to use the lift in an emergency.

The extent to which the BMS integrates with the safety and security procedures, will vary depending on the requirements of the specific hotel, a series of bungalows at a resort does not have the same requirements as an inner city high-rise business hotel. The architecture of hospitality spaces is contributing to the development of comfort and safety through improvements in materials such as fire retarding paints, materials and fabrics.

Delivering the designs according to Accor’s standards in India presents some
challenges, similar to those in China 15 years ago but more so, because the cities are more spread out and so much is determined by state rather than federal officials the variation across projects is large. However, Accor has experience of emerging markets and their technical team has experienced derived from 280 odd hotels in Asia pacific to draw from. So while the company outsources architecture and design, the inhouse technical team oversees this process.

The amount of back-up or redundancy that is built in to cope with India’s infrastructure defecits varies from project to project. A back-up power generator can be found in all the hotels, however, in the Accor-managed Hyderabad International Convention Centre (HICC), India’s largest and first purpose built convention centre a full 100 percent power back up is available. The Novotel Hyderabad and HICC recently hosted the Asian Development Bank meeting and had their been a power out, the conference could have carried on unaffected.

In sum, says Oldfeild, generally hoteliers and their guests are more security conscious now but not in an overt manner “as times change and people change our reactions have to change”. Systems are in place to make people feel comfortable in a particular environment and India is an exciting market to be delivering them in. Accor has been there when markets were opening up before and the team have by now been exposed to the challenges within each of their different business units - luxury, business and budget. Each project management structure and process structure represents incremental improvement. As foreign direct investment rules relax further, even more owners and operators will join the competition for the enormous latent demand for well-run hotels in India. RFP

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