This review will be cursory as I've gone through several medical emergencies since checking out, but I'm writing this quickly now because I feel it's important for both the employees at Baymont as well as future guests that are disabled.
I've stayed collectively several weeks at Baymont this year. I really enjoyed the hotel, the professionalism of the staff. And I had a nice relationship with the manager, Nicole, who inspired me to use the hotel as a home base while working on various digital nomad projects. Nicole was the perfect blend of warmth and corporate expertise.
Maybe corporate can figure out the backstory. I won't get into it here, but clearly something was going on.
I needed to extend my booking at one point, but was told I needed to change rooms the following week, if I were to do that, because there was limited space. Of course, I didn't have a problem with this and agreed, and was told I was going to be moved the following Friday. The next Thursday arrived with me getting knocks on my door from housekeeping asking me when I'm going to leave, and passing me the phone with Rachel on it.
She was aggressively demanding to know what was going on. I could hear her yelling through the receiver at the housekeepers before the phone even made it to my ear.
She was yelling so hard that I could barely speak at first, then demanded I get out of the room ASAP with the two housekeepers watching as I packed like I was on the Titanic.
Again, I'm disabled. Even packing is difficult for me. And just as I was finishing up, the housekeeper passed me the phone again and she says, good news, you can stay one more night, but I need you out by 8 or 9 a.m. tomorrow morning at the latest. Doesn't that sound good to you? I told her that it didn't sound good, that I'd already packed up my room, and if I'd done so, I'd just as soon go to whatever room I had to go to then to save me the trouble of unpacking and then packing again the next day. This clearly infuriated her.
She acquiesced and gave me a horrible, dark, dank room on the bottom floor that I'm sure nobody wants, as some sort of weird retaliation. Then I could hear her yelling at the housekeepers to go in and clean the room right after telling them that they could go home because I was staying. I had to listen to the housekeeper talk to her poor family and let them know she wouldn't be coming home and be late. There was just no reason for it. She was angry at me and she was angry at the housekeepers for literally no reason. There were plenty of rooms available for any guests that would come in that night. And if housekeeping could afford to not clean my room that night, she should have just let the housekeepers go home as planned.
I have a severe autoimmune condition where if I come into contact with the wrong environment I can have a seizure or lose the use of my left leg. It's very scary. The room that she sent me to had mold or something in it and I immediately had a blazing headache.
Robert at the front desk was incredibly kind and professional and allowed me to switch to a room that didn't impact me like that. He, as well as the other staff, had been very kind and changed me to a room that was better.
But it still wasn't great. After a very short period, I started getting cardiac arrhythmias in it. I got smells of the sewer coming up through the drain in the bathroom. And realized that was what was setting my cardiac condition off. And within a few days, I needed a change from that room too. I'm only saying this because, again, I had spent several weeks at the hotel. I never asked for one thing. I was quiet and did nothing but pay my bill. These are the only two times when I ever asked for anything.
Finally... When it was time to check out, I had a problem with my rental car and asked if I could extend one more day and was told that the hotel was fully booked. But this was a Sunday, and I know there was plenty of spaces, and that they weren't fully booked. My family used to work in the hotel industry. I know that this is code for someone who has been blacklisted from the hotel.
Despite spending several weeks there, and several thousand dollars, and never so much as asking for a single room cleaning, I--along with the staff--was spoken to and treated like a dog. Sensing that there was something different about me and my medical condition, she singled me out. It was inhumane and creepy.
I'm really concerned about disabled people in the future as well as the staff. I've worked in hostile environments before, and this clearly seems like one to me. In only the first three months of the year, three very sweet staff members announced that they were quitting. read more
