Five of the six U.S. properties included as part of the Trump Hotel Collection are not on the federal government’s list of hotels and motels which have been approved as “fire safe” for federal employees to stay in.
A hotel that is not on the approved list cannot be used by federal employees if they wish to be reimbursed for their lodging. This means that if Trump were to become President, no federal employee would be approved to stay at one of his hotels.
How rare is it that a hotel doesn’t make the list? Well, it turns out that the great majority of the approximately 53,000 in the United States–fully 87 percent–are on the list, according to data from FEMA and the American Hotel and Lodging Association.
Hotels are not required by law to join the list, but they must if they want to do any business with the federal government. Such business can be worth billions of dollars on a annual basis.
When asked for a comment, Trump Hotels spokeswoman Christine Da Silva remarked:
“There are many optional programs such as this which our hotels regularly evaluate. While some of our properties do not participate in this particular program, our hotels are extremely vigilant and adhere to required fire and safety codes.”
Robert Solomon, division manager for building and life safety codes at the National Fire Protection Association said that a hotel or motel doesn’t appear on the list doesn’t mean it’s unsafe or that it doesn’t comply with local fire codes. It does, however, mean that the property has not taken the step of presenting its fire safety credentials to the federal government in order to participate in a program which was set up in 1990 to protect government employees from staying in unsafe buildings.
The 1990 Hotel and Motel Fire Safety Act was passed to encourage venues to install sprinklers, smoke detectors, and fire alarms in any place of lodging in the United States.
So before you stay at a Trump hotel, you might want to consider two facts: They are not approved by the federal government as fire safe, and your money will go to a megalomaniac who has long considered himself to be above the law.
Featured Image Via Flickr available under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License
