This is a great thread, will definitely take things on board.

As the fire raged in Grenfell Tower in London yesterday, I couldn't help think about this thread, and share some of the tips with my colleagues as we spoke about it. It wasn't a hotel fire, but the principles remain. Unfortunately it seems the residents of Grenfell had little chance, given a horrific set of circumstances. Horrifying. And thanks for sharing the tips in here. It genuinely could save lives.

Another thing that may not have been mentioned in this thread is the differing fire protection standards across the globe. Are you in a high rise in Canada or the US? If so, you can safely assume that there are working fire alarms and fire suppression systems in place. It will also be constructed of very slow burning material. 99.9% of the time, you are safer staying in your room if there is a fire in another part of the building.

Those same standards are obviously not in place in all other countries so your plan of action needs to account for that.

Here's some information provided directly by the Fire Chief in Toronto

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toront...vice-1.4161078

October 9, 2017, two hotels near each other pretty much burnt to the ground near Ssnta Rosa, Sonoma County, California, when winds up to 70 MPH / 110 mph caused flames to jump US Highway 101. Staying in one's room in either location would have been a death sentence.

The property shown here was the Hilton Sonoma Wine Country hotel.

Sure but by the look of things, they should have been empty already, no?

Rooms were emptied at 2am by staff banging on doors - but seemingly in trying circumstances with no alarms or emergency lighting.
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/hilt...as-burned.html

Fire crews were stretched and focused on saving lives rather than saving property, moving on if a property was ablaze (eg. the two photos above of the same location the next morning)

Wow! That's scary!:eek::eek::eek:

A really informative post! I get really anxious whenever I travel. I can't imagine myself being trapped in a hotel during fire or tsunami so I always choose a room near the fire exit.

A quick note on exit stairways: not all of them terminate at the ground level, some go beyond to underground floors, or the exit is at an intermediate floor, like on a terrace. The exit sign pointing to the right door to EXIT the stairway to the outside may not be easily identifiable.

A few years back I stayed at a nice hotel in DC for a conference. Since my room was on the 3rd floor, and I generally dislike elevators, I decided to take the stairs down. I went all the way to the bottom, only to find a locked door to the parking garage. So I went back up two floors, and on the landing, behind a couple of mattresses and a housekeeping card, was the exit door! The hotel did not seem concerned when I reported this and insisted that that stairway wasn't an emergency exit (despite the signage). I let the fire department know of the situation after checking out. Storing 'stuff' in the exit stairway seems to be a common phenomenon. Staff might think it's OK, b/c it's out of sight, and surely no guest would ever want to take the ugly stairs over the nice elevator, right?

That's a very informative post. Definitely something to keep in mind in the future.

A couple of points though:
- I often see hotels where the windows do not open. This is especially annoying and frustrating since in case of a fire, it's sometimes counter productive to open the window. In that case, the only solution would be to destroy the window but that can be an issue if there's a lot of smoke coming from outside. I'm not sure what the best course of action is
- Like altabello, I don't like elevators and will often take the stairs down (plus it's good exercise :)) and I often notice that hotels store stuff in the exit stairway. I've never thought about reporting it to the fire department but that's a good idea because hotel staff usually just think it's ok...

I’m so glad I stumbled upon his post! Thanks to everyone that has contributed. This is such great information and it will definitely alter my hotel procedures. I’ve never thought of this in the least.

This is equally informative and scary at the same time. I don't want to be in a situation like this on my trips.

I'm staying at a Hyatt Regency in Sydney and noticed that there was no emergency exit plan on the door. As I've seen that in every Hotel I've been in I would have thought if that that is a legal requirement. Is that so?

Even if it isn't a legal requirement, I would hope it would be "minimum standards" requirement of all the major chains. I suggest you contact Hyatt.

It had the Perspex thing on back of the door that it should of been in but it was empty.

I might just contact them because you just never know if someone is in a situation that they need to know how to get out. I was at one end of the hotel and it was like a rabbit warren down there with a few ways to get to the lifts.