// TOURISM // Pool Safety
Enhanced safety in hotel swimming pools
As part of their duty of care, tour operators must ensure that the products they offer comply with the Health & Safety regulations of the country in which the tour operator is based. This applies in particular to swimming pools and water parks.
Following several fatal accidents involving children in hotel swimming pools, which were primarily caused by suction devices, a working group on pool safety was founded in 2012 on the initiative of the tour operators in the German Travel Association. The working group subsequently defined an industry standard for pool safety. For this purpose, a concept of test methods and procedures was developed with the help of recognised specialists in the field of pool safety, which is constantly adapted to current requirements and new findings.
As a result, the pools are inspected according to a uniform standard of inspection criteria. The tour operators continuously commission trained staff or service providers to test the pool facilities in the destinations. This is done on the basis of a comprehensive test sheet, for which A3M has developed a corresponding web-based database with the Pool Safety modules, via which the test results can be entered.
Pool testers have the possibility to enter the test results via forms. Tour operators can view the data at any time and continuously check and add to it. A comprehensive rights system allows for the specific configuration of accesses and releases.
In order to prevent a pool from being tested more often than necessary, tour operators can share their results amongst each other. The system also controls the entire workflow around the escalation management and if all pools are free of defects it sendsso-called “all clear” mails to the hoteliers, which certify that the pools are in order.
The Pool Safety modules can be used online and offline. In the latter case, we have a desktop app that can be used to enter the data offline, e.g. by the pool testers directly on site, where they may have no or only poor mobile data coverage.