LITTLETON, Colo. -- A Littleton family says they were kicked out of the Homewood Suites and hotel staff insulted their disabled son, who has cerebral palsy.
Christina Steinmetz and her disabled son were staying at the Homewood Suites in Littleton while the floors were being redone at their home.
Steinmetz said her husband had made her a reservation through Tuesday, so she was overwhelmed when hotel staff unexpectedly told her she needed to check out on Monday afternoon in less than 30 minutes.
"A half-hour is hardly long enough to move two rooms full of equipment, and medication and supplies," Steinmetz said.
"It is difficult. We have a lot of equipment," said Christina's daughter, Elly Steinmetz-Lewis.
Steinmetz showed Denver-based KMGH an email that shows they had a separate reservation for Monday night, but said she was told she needed to leave anyway.
"I was told I needed to vacate the room," explained Steinmetz.
Frazzled and all by herself, Steinmetz said she started bringing all her son's equipment into the lobby and was forced to leave her son there in only a diaper and a t-shirt.
"They ask her to remove him first, like he's some sort of eyesore for the lobby," explained Lewis.
"It was embarrassing and humiliating, and he can't speak for himself," said Steinmetz.
KMGH reporter Jennifer Kovaleski stopped by the hotel, but was immediately kicked out.
"Do you have a comment about what happened?" Kovaleski asked. "Is there a manager who can speak to us outside?"
"Do I need to call the sheriff's out? I already asked you to leave," responded the hotel staff member at the front desk.
The Steinmetzes said they hope this can serve as a learning opportunity.
"For us all to get together and say: Something happened, and we can do better," said Steinmetz.
"They didn't treat my brother with respect. They treated him like he was luggage," said Lewis.
Homewood Suites later sent KMGH the following statement:
With social media's instantaneous and massive outreach in today's society, it is inevitable that stories will spread prior to having all the facts presented to paint a clear picture. Recently, we had a guest whose family member booked multiple reservations for one night stays at the HWS in Littleton, Colorado. Due to a temporary property management system outage and a miscommunication between the hotel and guest, the reservation for that day could not be located. The guest did not make any indication to the hotel that a separate one-night reservation for a different room type had been made for that evening. The hotel was sold-out for the night and no extensions to due-out reservations were able to be granted to any guests.
The only request that the guest made was for a 'late' check-out due to the number of items that needed to be moved from the room. The guest did not make us aware of any special circumstances. This request was granted by the hotel.
At this time a family member called the hotel and explained that there was another reservation but chose to cancel it since the guest had already started moving out of the hotel. The management team tried multiple times to resolve the issue and keep the guest in-house. The hotel was not made aware of the son's handicap until he was present in the lobby following the decision to check-out.
The Homewood Littleton Hotel takes pride in providing the best guest experience to its patrons. Rest assured, no one was kicked out of the hotel. The confusion was over separate individual reservations for each night and an untimely computer outage which inhibited our ability to locate new reservations for that evening. Upon identifying the new reservation for that evening under the guest name, every attempt was made to keep the guest at our hotel.
Hotel management is trying to reach the family to appropriately address this matter further and clear up this misperception. We would like to apologize to the guest and their family for any miscommunication on our part that led to the early departure from our hotel. We will continue to reach out with the contact information we have to reach an understanding. It is very misleading to suggest that this situation had anything to do with the son's disability. We honor and respect all of our guests and are very sorry for the inconvenience that was experienced.
