A woman staying at St Regis Bal Harbour Hotel is suing Marriott International and Clearview Building Services, LLC, a cleaning company hired by the hotel, for $7 million for an incident that occurred during her stay at the hotel. It seems that a hotel employee walked in on her while she was in the shower and leered at her for 3 minutes. When she saw him, she screamed and he brushed up against as he left. Horrifying
The woman, identified only as C.N., alleges that the hotel was negligent in how they responded to this incident. These responses included urging her not to call the police and they would handle it. Also, she claims that the hotel obstructed the investigation and allowing critical evidence to disappear by cleaning the room. She also claims that the hotel refused to provide photographs of staff members who had been on duty at that time.
The National Crime Victimization Survey says about 7,800 sexual assault incidents are reported in hotels each year, equaling around one per hour across the United States.
People commenting on this case were wondering why the woman would not deadbolt the door when she was alone in the shower. This is a very good precaution that we highly recommend. In this case, the deadbolting of the room would have been highly irregular because, she was traveling with her boyfriend who was down by the pool. He would not have been able to gain access to his room when he came back.
To add insult to this injury, the hotel offered to change the room for the guest and provided a larger suite for them. Then they proceeded to charge her for it!!
The thing we do not understand is how can the hotel get this incident so wrong. Their response is almost criminal. We are sure that there are several policies of what to do in case of a room invasion and/or theft to the room. Calling the police is high on the list. If not, then they should rewrite their policy.
Also, if you want to bury this case which it appears that the hotel wanted to do, then why not comp them for the room and try to stem the investigation with real offer. It seems that they were trying to avoid any issue by concealing it from the police and destroying any and all evidence. Lack of judgment on the hotel management side.