Today’s batch of burning questions, my smart-aleck answers and the real deal:
Question: I have my home up for sale and had four showings one day and another set for early the next morning, and I thought it would be easiest if I checked into a hotel. Imagine my shock when three motels said they won’t allow locals to take a room!!! I think there are many reasons that someone might want a room for the night. Friends from Marshall said they were turned away, too. I then tried Hendersonville and they said it’s a 50-mile radius around Asheville. I am originally from a large city, and we often took hotel rooms for big festivals. Again, I can think of many reasons why a room might be needed — plumbing issues, etc. When was this ridiculous law enacted and why? It’s 2019 and Asheville now has many, many hotels. I hesitate to say it’s discriminatory, but I will say it is a ridiculous, outdated law.
You are viewing: Why Don’t Hotels Rent To Locals
My answer: I once booked a hotel room to get away from the stench of my male basset hound, Cooper. He followed me to the hotel and pretended to be room service. Then he hogged the bed.
Real answer: So, no state law or county-wide policy is in play here.
“These are individual policies of the hotels,” said Marla Tambellini, deputy director and vice president of marketing at the Explore Asheville Convention & Visitors Bureau. “It would be best to reach out to a couple of the hotels individually.”
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So I did.
Himanshu Karvir, who sits on the CVB’s Tourism Development Authority board, is the president and CEO of Virtelle Hospitality LLC, which operates several local hotels, including a Holiday Inn in West Asheville, the Quality Inn in East Asheville and a Comfort Suites.
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“So obviously, the biggest reason my hotels do it is we’ve probably had experiences where we’ve rented to someone with a local address and they had a party or violated the policies of the hotel,” Karvir said.
Karvir said just one of his hotels has such a policy in place, and those decisions are left up to the individual managers. As long as hotels are consistent in their policies, and they’re not discriminating on the basis of federally recognized statuses such as race or religion, they’re not breaking any laws.
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Generally speaking, Karvir said, his hotels do rent to locals.
“We offer rooms to everybody who walks in our doors, because they are our guests, and like the lady who wrote you said, there are definitely situations where people might need a local hotel room,” Karvir said.
He cited the issue a few weeks ago where the city of Asheville had problems with brown water caused by manganese infiltration. Some parts of town had clear water, and locals sought out hotel rooms there, and local hotels rented to them.
Years ago I fielded a similar question about this issue, and hoteliers then explained that they’d had rooms destroyed by partiers or inhabited by unsavory folks, including prostitutes and drug peddlers. In some cases, homeless people have trashed rooms and skipped out on bills.
So denying a room makes sense in some cases.
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One hotel general manager I talked to this week said his hotel has a policy of not renting to locals, but they will make exceptions for folks who have been burned out of a house or have some other pressing need. He noted that Asheville is a hospitality town geared toward tourists, so the hotels want to keep rooms available for out-of-towners.
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Monark Patel is the president of CEO of the Milan Hotel Group in Asheville, which operates several local hotels, including Fairfield Inn, Country Inn & Suites, Clarion Inn and Quality Inn. His company does not have a policy that forbids individual hotels from renting to locals.
Generally speaking in the industry, Patel said, “It just depends on a case by case basis.”
“If you need a place to stay because your house is being renovated or you’ve got family visiting, we’re more than willing to work with them,” he said. “If we have people walking up with cases of beer, we’re not renting to them.”
In the reader’s case, where she had several real estate showings in a row, Patel said, “If she came to one of our properties, we’d rent to her.”
So the bottom line is to keep trying, and be willing to explain your situation, maybe repeatedly.
This is the opinion of John Boyle. To submit a question, contact him at 232-5847 or [email protected]
Source: https://t-tees.com
Category: WHY
