Picture this, if you will: you’re an assassin, and after a successful hit you need someplace safe to lie low for a time. You can’t go home, for that’s much too obvious. You could flee the country, but let’s face it—depending on who it is you took out (in context, it’s the difference between killing Chewbacca and offing Jar Jar Binks, for example), then retaliation knows no boundaries, and you may not even make it off the plane. You could go to the last place that anyone would ever think of looking, but not many theaters are running a Snow White/Joker: Folie à Deux double feature. Finally, an idea hits. You decide to go to a hotel filled with people just like you. Fellow assassins, having drinks, going down the water slide, what have you. Preposterous, right? It wouldn’t make sense in the real world, of course, but in the world of John Wick, the Continental Hotels are safe havens for the weary assassin, with a strict no-kill policy on site. But if you’ve actually watched the John Wick films, you’ll know that’s not really the case.
The Continental Hotels Are Safe If You Play By the Rules

The Continental Hotels of the John Wick universe, which is currently being revisited in theaters with From the World of John Wick: Ballerina, are a worldwide chain of luxury hotels, with locations in New York, Rome, Casablanca, and Osaka. They function as neutral territories for hitmen—sorry, hitpeople, assassins, and powerful criminals. They offer everything an assassin needs during their respite: food, accommodation, transportation, hair salons, and weapons and ammunition supplies. So you can order room service, maybe a cheeseburger and a Glock, while a black market doctor tends to the gaping wound from your narrow escape. Now that’s service. Guests at the Continental Hotels must abide by a strict set of rules. The first, and most important, is that no “business” is to be done on hotel grounds. No fighting, no killing, no taunting. Secondly, in order to qualify for the sanctuary the Continental Hotels offer, you need to pay using the gold coins that the Continental uses as its own form of currency. Buying a drink at the bar, for example, qualifies you for sanctuary until the end of the day. Presumably, paying to use the water slide offers the same…if there is a water slide—there should be. Who doesn’t love some good, clean, watery fun? Assassins—they’re just like us. Oh, and blood oaths must be honored and carried out. In addition, there are the rules set down by the High Table, the supreme authority in the underworld. If a member has been excommunicated by the High Table, they are not to be helped or assisted in any way, lest you be beaten soundly or killed as punishment. And the Table has the authority to revoke a Continental Hotel’s status as a safe zone by declaring it “deconsecrated.”
The Rules Don’t Make the Continental Hotels Any Safer

But we’ve seen Ms. Perkins (Adrianne Palicki) kill Harry (Clarke Peters) on the premises, John pop Santino (Riccardo Scamarcio) in the hotel lounge with a bullet to the head, and the Table deconsecrating both the New York and Osaka hotels in order to put this Wick out by siccing dozens of killers on him. Sounds like a safe place to be, right? Bollocks. So, what’s the point of having a sanctuary rule if it’s discretionary, in the case of the Table, or if the threat of punishment isn’t enough to dissuade killings? And does it mean that anybody can kill anybody under a deconsecration, or does it just apply to John Wick? Which brings up another point: the hotel is full of people who have been trained to kill without leaving any evidence, so unless there are cameras literally everywhere in the building, an assassin could easily kill another out of sight, and unless they know who did it, how do they mete out their justice? Do they bring in Elsbeth Tascioni?

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‘John Wick’ Is Called ‘John Wick’ Because Keanu Reeves Couldn’t Get the Original Title Right

They made the right call with this one.

It doesn’t help that the hotel is full of objects that have the potential to be used as a weapon. Heck, John’s used a pencil to kill and a book, which is a… novel… way of killing someone. (Honestly, it was right there. I couldn’t resist.) Anyway, perhaps instead of having these objects tempting guests to use them, everything should be made by Nerf. Nerf cutlery. Nerf glassware. Nerf writing utensils and book covers. And if an assassin has brought along his family for a vacation, how does he explain to little Jimmy why there are dead people in the lobby of a so-called safe haven? Does he chalk it up to a big ketchup incident, and the guy with the ketchup right in the head is sleeping? Honestly, no consideration whatsoever. Sanctuary, my ass. I’d rather take in the double feature.