I am old enough for my eyes not to widen too large at any breaking news, but Friday as I was preparing Hotel News Now’s popular 5 Things to Know feature, they opened as wide as saucers as I saw the news from Berlin.
In the very early hours of dawn, the iconic, cylindrical aquarium in Berlin’s Radisson Collection Hotel Berlin somehow burst its seams, resulting in the loss of more than 260,000 gallons of water and the loss of hundreds of fish. The BBC reported that fire brigade officials found some fish alive where water had collected throughout the hotel.
At press time, no one knows the cause.
We can speculate that water exerts tremendous pressure. I need to ask Francesca, my wife, about this, as she is a physicist.
What I can speculate on with more solidity is what good fortune it was that the incident did not happen at 8 p.m. on a Wednesday when, perhaps, there would have been dinner, convention and meeting guests all milling around.
Everyone can thank their lucky stars.
The hotel is iconic in the European hotel industry.
Many of us have attended the hotel for functions during the annual International Hotel Investment Forum. Last year I stayed at the hotel, which at the time was three-quarters of the way through a massive renovation and conversion from a Radisson Blu to a Radisson Collection property.
The aquarium could not be missed.
It towered over the lobby on massive stilts and rose nearly the whole height from floor to ceiling. Several guestrooms had a direct sight line of the spectacle, and it really was a thing to behold.
Guests would take the elevators up and down the inside of the lobby to get the perfect view of every foot of height of the aquarium.
The hotel’s lighting and the aquarium’s glass made the water attractively blue, and around it docilely paraded 1,500 fish from numerous species.
Sadly, all died in a cold Berlin December.
Radisson Hotel Group staff are no doubt devastated.
One of them sent Hotel News Now the following statement:
“This morning at approximately 6.30 a.m. Central European Time the aquarium of the Aquadom Berlin, which is located in the Radisson Collection Hotel, Berlin, collapsed. As far as we know to date, no guests were injured, and together with the authorities we are looking into the cause of the incident. We have immediately closed the hotel until further notice and are relocating guests.”
The loss of animals is always a tragedy.
We assume them to be innocent, and presumably none had a say as to what would be their living quarters.
Might we question the necessity of such attractions? Is it pure folly?
Good questions, I think.
I hope you all have a far less dramatic Christmas and holiday season. My best wishes to you all.
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