Power Protection FEATURED ARTICLE

Oftentimes when we think of companies being temporarily shut down by power outages, we assume that they’re smaller businesses. SMBs and even small, local, family-owned businesses almost have an excuse when it comes to ignoring the logical step of investing in uninterruptable power supplies (UPS). Some say UPS can be too expensive, and I understand that concern. Granted, as we’ve pointed out many times before, the cost of losing business for days at a time due to a preventable power outage greatly outweighs the one-time cost of purchasing a UPS, but I digress. Companies that can’t get away with that same excuse, though, are large corporations like Universal.

There is absolutely no way UPS systems are too expensive for a giant company like Universal. And yet, the Universal CityWalk in Orlando experienced a major power outage Wednesday night. The outage was caused by an off-site issue and resulted in parts of CityWalk and several hotels losing power at about 8 p.m. The lights stayed out until around 9 p.m. that same night, so it was a rather quick fix but, for a company that relies solely on tourism and shopping, the damage had already been done.

Unlike the parks, CityWalk is focused on shopping for the most part. There are restaurants, stores, nightclubs, etc., all of which became nonoperational for almost an hour thanks to the power outage. While an hour may not seem like much, it really is when you take into consideration the number of people who were unable to spend money at that time. Thousands of people visit Universal parks every day, and going to the CityWalk is a common way to unwind after spending the day riding roller coasters. However, because Universal did not have UPS set up to protect CityWalk, the company lost out on all of that business. The hundreds of people likely at CityWalk during that hour spent little money, which is a huge loss for Universal.

Yes, the company still gets thousands of dollars every day from visitors, so that hour of lost income certainly won’t put them under, but it’s still a completely unnecessary loss. In fact, the bigger the company is, the bigger the loss is during a power outage. No one, whether they’re a huge corporation like Universal or a small mom and pop shop down the road, likes to lose money. So why not eliminate potential threats altogether by investing in UPS?