There is a new game in town, and it is costing hoteliers and insurance companies millions of dollars in avoidable damages. Reports are wide-spread of hotel employees being talked into activating fire alarms, breaking out windows, setting off sprinkling systems...the list gets longer every day.
"Go Break The Windows...Immediately!!" or "There is a malfunction with the sprinkler system, you must break off a piece of the sprinkler-head to prevent the system from going off!!!"
This is a real problem - there are formal reports of individuals calling the front desk of a hotel and representing themselves as employees of a "fire sprinkler service". The employee is told (rather urgently) that ..."there has been a malfunction of the fire alarm system", then instructed to "PULL the alarms to re-set them". Of course, this sets off the fire alarms in the entire hotel disturbing and disrupting guests. To make matters worse...some employees have been instructed to break the windows out to "keep the sprinklers from turning on and causing serious damage to the hotel". In more severe cases, employees were told to break a portion of the sprinkler head to prevent it from turning on.
One hotel owner reported - "It was chaos in here...people running around The guests have already started asking for refunds on their rooms, and I have no idea how much damage has been done."
An article recently released by the American Hotel & Lodging Association, directed hotel owners to the following sites;
Associated Press (syndicated in various outlets) - June 11, 2009
York News-Times - June 10, 2009
TheSmokingGun.com - June 9, 2009