well we were in the hotel today and it caught on fire (or not). We smelled smoke in the bedroom on the 19th floor, went out to see what was going on, the staff said 'Don't worry sir'.

I said 'let's get the hell out of here'. Within the next few seconds the smoke went from faint to strong in the room and we went out from the service lift. It stopped on the 17th and 16th floor, the smoke seemed to be much stronger on the 16th floor, where a shaking employee entered.

There didn't appear to be evacuation training or formal procedures, the policy seemed to be 'let's hope the guests don't notice'. We left the hotel and went far away, as we didn't want to wait and see if someone was trying to blow the place up.

We came back a few hours later, the lobby ceiling was badly damaged due to the (automated) sprinklers and nearly all the guests had left or were leaving. A few however stayed. The hotel did call other hotels for us, but they didn't pay for our taxi. They said they would charge us when their systems were back up.

The news report claims there was no fire, but only an electrical fault

http://www.antara.co.id/en/news/1271...hotel-in-medan

however, the statement that smoke reached the 18th floor is false, because it was strong on the 19th floor, and much stronger on the 16th floor. Also Indonesian police are generally untrustworthy and will make false statements to suit business interests.

A slightly different report here

http://www.mediaindonesia.com/read/2...riott-Terbakar

That said, the hotel we moved to, the Aryaduta, although having a better pool, is much inferior, with greatly smaller rooms for a very similar room rate. So I guess we will be back to the JW Marriott....