Some friends of mine were entertaining at a hotel-casino on Las Vegas Blvd. (The Strip), recently. That’s not unusual. The unusual aspects of their gig were the sloppy, unsanitary, and unsafe conditions at the hotel.
Since 9/11, the tightening of security at Las Vegas hotels has made life for vendors time consuming and difficult. Improved security is a good thing, mostly; however, tardiness of hotel security, when called to open access creates unnecessary problem.
That part is life, and although difficult, it’s manageable. The scary part is that this hotel had the same access locked from the inside. In plain language, exits that should be available for emergency exit were locked from the inside…. no push bar. I don’t work for ‘the county, the building department, or the fire department,’ but I’ll bet that violates fire code.
Over time, I’ve learned that people dying at your venue is generally bad public relations and even worse for business. A flash fire at this property could easily kill employees, guests, and vendors.
But yet, there’s more!!
Vendors observed a paper bag with rancid meat (it apparently stunk to high heaven). The guess is that a kitchen staffer had set some meat aside to take out a couple of days earlier, and had forgotten it. The bag reeked.
Upon entry for set up, the room had not been serviced properly. The entertainment stage was littered with broken glass. After no help from banquet staff, the entertainers commandeered a broom, and did the best they could to sweep off the glass. It was a little better, but it still wasn’t right.
Finally, the room for the event was supposed to open at 6pm for guests. It opened at 7pm, and no dinner service began for another 20 minutes. There was no event preceding this one. The circumstance appeared to simply be bad management.
MORALE: Although I haven’t shared the name of this hotel, I can assure you that bad news travels fast behind the scenes. In fact, before making this post, I double-checked the exit-safety issue with other vendors. They all confirmed the unsafe state of locked doors at this venue as common practice.
Given time, eventually there are several possible outcomes, none of which are good for business.
- Vendors elect not to work at the venue, and share this information with other vendors and potential clients.
- An employee, patron, or vendor reports the condition to the fire department. The business gets ‘written up,’ and possibly fined. The situation makes the local paper and TV news.
- A fire occurs, people are injured and die. The tragedy makes the national news.
- Add your tragedy ‘here’…
I would guess that a ‘locked-in policy’ probably resulted from one theft or a series of thefts. However, the solution of defeating an easy emergency exit just trades one problem (theft) for a bigger one (major fire hazard). Someone needs to do a little more thinking and come up with a better idea. That assumes that anyone actually did any thinking, to start with.
Don’t you agree?
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