My wife went to get a room at a hotel last night. After she presented an ID with her address on it, she was told the hotel would not rent her a room because she has a residence in the city.
Any idea wtf this hotel is doing?
What city?
And what hotel?
Hampton Inn Springfield MO.
The hotel probably doesn’t matter but the city could give us a clue as to what was going on.
Hampton Inn Springfield MO.
Hotels have generally bad experiences with people from in town who show up without reservations, so they’re generally more hesitant to take them in. Other than the obvious worry about prostitution, there are also people who want a place to throw a party and get up to other activities that are undesirable. It’s like, if you’re from here, why do you all of a sudden need a place to stay? People from out of town generally just need a place to stay and don’t have ulterior motives.
Maybe they think they are preventing prostitution? Seems silly. We occasionally have reasons to stay in a local hotel.
ETA, what Voltaire said.
So you can be denied a room based on your home address?
Last year I saw a sign in a Regina, Sask., motel office saying the same thing. I wondered whether the prohibition is legal.
You can be denied a room based on anything, unless it’s membership in a class protected against discrimination.
Yeah, it’s rare but I’ve had reasons to stay in hotels in Richmond and I live just outside the city, I’ve never been questioned on it. There were some older relatives of mine who used to stay in the nicest hotel in their city every year for their anniversary. They’d always go to a very upscale restaurant where they went each year for the occasion then stay at the hotel. There’s so many valid reasons to get hotels in your own city I’m really shocked at this. Plus, aside from conventions and other special events hotels are usually lustful of as many guests as they can book, as they’re rarely at full occupancy outside of those special cases. From a business perspective it shouldn’t really matter where your guest is coming from.
Colibri:
Yeah, that’s kind of what I’m worried about because my wife is black.
This is exactly it. At least 75% of our problem rooms are locals with no reservation or same-day reservations. It’s not that we don’t have local guests that are perfectly nice and quiet, but we really have to be careful.
Our more senior front desk clerks have developed pretty good judgement about who to rent to, but when a party room gets in anyway it can be a nightmare to deal with them and all the pissed off guests in rooms around them.
My wife and I have booked rooms in a nice hotel by the river. They have balconies to sit and enjoy the view. There’s a nice restaurant in the hotel.
It’s only 7 miles from my house. But staying there for a night is like a mini vacation.
I doubt they care whether she is black - the better question is, were they thinking party or hooker ?
I’m not trying to imply that there was anything about your wife’s appearance, reputation, demeanor, etc., that would have given the hotel clerk reason to suspect this but, in the small New England city where I grew up, and where most of my family still lives, there is a growing drug epidemic with a lot of the drugs sold by dealers who travel from NYC and the Springfield MA/Hartford CT and sell out of apartments and hotel rooms rented for that purpose, often by local women in exchange for some of the profits, free drugs, forgiveness of drug related debt, because they are dating, etc., or some combination of these.
A friend of mine who manages a local hotel says that the hotel’s policy is to simply refuse a room to anyone who they have any reason to believe might be involved in this, as the potential costs to the hotel are almost unlimited - i.e. bad publicity, the room could be unrentable for several days due to the investigation following a drug bust, potential liability to other patrons stemming from renting to potentially violent criminals, chemical hazards if the room is used to cook meth, and so on. One of the ways they try to keep these people out is simply by refusing rooms to people who don’t fit the profile of a typical tourist, and a local drivers license might trigger that.
Again, let me reiterate that I’m not trying to imply anything about your wife, just that her local driver’s license in and of itself might have caused the hotel staff to worry that she was renting the room on behalf of someone else for illicit purposes.
You’re not from the American South, are you?
I agree they statistically cause more trouble, but I would never have turned guests away based on just that. That’s just when they waltz in with hookers and blow within sight of the other guests. As **The Lurker Above **says, you get very good at judging trouble.
Also, what kind of an idiot n00b was this front desk person anyway? You don’t tell the people why you won’t have them! Phssh…
Another reason it’s seriously stupid is that it pays to have a good rapport among residents. People have guests, people work for businesses that have guests. It sounds like a hotel that doesn’t want business to me.
Well, around here people do tend to care that she is black, and in fact that is why they would be extra inclined to see her as party or hooker. [though she was dressed in business clothes with a suitcase…]
But it is nice to hear that this kind of refusal isn’t just totally random/made up.
Crazy thing is both she and I have stayed there on other occasions for a variety of reasons, though not in last 18 months.
Vaevictis: Take this as a rhetorical question if it’s too nosy - either way it will demonstrate the point from the hotel’s point of view…
Why *did *your wife need to get a hotel room in town last night? Did you two maybe get in a fight? Will you (the husband) be showing up at 2am and causing a ruckus? Will the police need to called?
And that’s just one of the many scenarios that makes a local more likely to cause trouble.