Having last looked at hotels in 2015, Adair Lewis now examines hotel fires over a longer period to highlight any new trends


Hotels risk review A


S THIS month’s theme is climate change, the subject that came to mind for these statistics was countryside fires, particularly


following the Saddleworth Moor blaze that put a great strain on fire and rescue service resources over a large part of the country. But a search of the large loss database revealed just nine fires in the ‘other outdoors including land’ category – only one in a park – but it did not record whether it was in a national park. That fire was started deliberately between 06:00 and 11:59 one morning, and resulted in a loss of £195,500. It is recorded that the fire and rescue service experienced problems gaining access – so presumably the fire was remote from a roadway. Having exhausted this topic, and looking for a


new area of interest, holidays and hotels came to mind. Although hotels were the subject of the loss analysis in March 2015, experience has indicated that a large number have been refurbished in recent years, so it could be interesting to identify any trends resulting from this expenditure. In the table, the statistics are slightly different, in that details of the large loss fires in hotels in the earlier survey, from 2009 to 2014, are compared with figures including three additional years, from 2009 to 2017. There have been an additional 20 large loss fires in this time, increasing from 140 to 160. This total remains just over 1% of all large loss fires (1.1% compared with the earlier 1.2%), but a slightly larger proportion of fires in the ‘other residential’ sector as a whole (37.5% compared with 33%). The proportions of fires started deliberately and accidentally have not changed significantly between the two surveys. This is disappointing, for


52 SEPTEMBER 2018 www.frmjournal.com


more than one in every five large hotel fires to be lit deliberately remains a serious concern, especially in view of the potential threat to life when people may be sleeping in unfamiliar surroundings. At first sight, there is a little reassurance in that


the proportions of fires occurring during the hours of darkness has declined significantly, but closer inspection of the times when incidents occurred reveals that this is almost certainly false news, as the proportion where the fire occurred at an unknown time has increased from 5% to over 40%! While some fires may have had a prolonged smouldering induction phase, most surely could be identified as originating within a specific six hour period of the day. Omitting such details from submissions is not serving the database well. The 20 additional large loss fires in the past three years have introduced just two problems for fire and rescue services, which is good news. There has been one more incident of inadequate firefighting water, and one relating to available resources. Unsurprisingly, the average cost of a major


hotel fire has increased dramatically, by nearly 65% in the past three years. General managers can now anticipate a loss of over £1.4m in the event of such an incident. Nearly three quarters of this will relate to damage to the property (up from 47% in 2015) and 24% to business interruption. Curiously, the latter figure is much reduced from the 41% recorded in 2015. The remaining components of the insurance losses are negligible.


Minimising the risk


Large hotels are complex properties, and may have gyms, pools, spas, shops and other


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