Fire failure forces conference move

The £100m new extension to the London Hilton Metropole failed its final fire checks last week and staff were forced to direct 2,000 people, due to attend its first conference and exhibition, to other London hotels.

But there was better news for the hotel this week as the fire brigade gave the hotel the go-ahead to host an awards dinner for 600 tonight (12 October).

Last week's conference of computer software company Staffware was not so lucky. It had to be switched to the Millennium Mayfair hotel in Grosvenor Square and the Grosvenor House in Park Lane.

The Four Seasons in Park Lane stepped in to stage the conference dinner on Friday evening.

The embarrassing last-minute hitch for the Metropole was due to a software fault on the fire alarm systems, and a spokesman for London fire brigade said that this sort of problem was "not unusual in new buildings".

There was also a problem, now fixed, over whether the fire alarm could be clearly heard in the bathrooms of the extension's new bedrooms when the shower was on.

Despite this drawback, the 800 residential delegates of the Staffware conference were still able to stay in the Hilton Metropole bedrooms because the fire brigade gave temporary dispensation as long as the problem was quickly solved.

One member of the Staffware team at the conference last week said that the company was only told of the switch in the conference venue at 12.35pm the day before the conference was due to start, and that many in the company were "extremely unhappy" about the change.

Tony Potter, chief operations officer for Millennium & Copthorne, said that he did not realise that the "very late" conference booking at the Millennium Mayfair had come from Hilton.

The Grosvenor House said that it had only 12 hours to pull the conference together, with operations director Jeremy Hopkins working 40 hours out of 48 to make sure it went smoothly.

by David Harris