‘Never stay at a Sonesta or those types of hotels’: Woman issues downtown hotel warning after harrowing Atlanta experience
A woman says she was “freaked out” after someone seemingly tried to break into her room. She says she was staying at the Sonesta Select Atlanta Cumberland Galleria Ballpark Hotel in Atlanta.
Haley Bartoletta posted a TikTok on Aug. 18 in which she issues a warning about this hotel to people in the downtown Atlanta area.
The TikTok has almost 300,000 views.
Bartolleta says she and her sister checked into the Sonesta hotel before going to a concert at a nearby venue.
Everything seemed “perfectly fine” with the hotel until they got back from the show, she says.
“It was like somebody was hotboxing with cigarettes in our room,” Bartolleta says about the smell of their hotel room.
Once her sister fell asleep, Bartoletta says she heard someone scanning into their room.
Eventually, Bartoletta fell asleep—but around 1:30am, she says, she heard something.
“There was a noise, like someone was trying to break through our adjoining door,” she says in her video.
She woke up her sister, and they headed toward the lobby to request a new room.
“We leave all of our stuff in the room, because at this point, I just want to get out as soon as possible,” she says.
A man that looked to be “strung out on some sort of drug" was walking in the hallway, she says. They quickly got into the elevator.
Bartoletta says the hotel receptionist’s reaction when they told him what happened was “weird." He didn’t ask any questions or apologize, she says.
He did offer them a new room, she says. The new room number was 517, and their previous room was 617.
“My mind immediately thought sex trafficking,” Bartoletta says. “Maybe dramatic, but I already had my guard up.”
How common is trafficking at hotels?
Hotels are primary targets for human trafficking, according to Van Law Firm. And hotels are implicated in 60% of human trafficking cases.
After grabbing their stuff from their old room, she and her sister went up to the fifth floor.
“The same man that was walking the hallway when we left our room on the sixth floor is now on the fifth floor, walking the hallway,” she says. “As soon as we get off the elevator, I see him. I literally grab my sister, we turn around, and we leave.”
She says the hotel receptionist did not say anything to them as they left.
“Feel like this is a lesson to just be very aware,” she says. “It could have been absolutely nothing, but also it could have been something, and my gut was telling me that something wasn't right.”
A couple of commenters said they had a similar experience as Bartoletta’s at the same Sonesta hotel.
“I STAYED THERE TOO, and we had a conjoining room again, and they also tried to break into our room through the conjoining door," one commenter wrote. I thought we [were] going crazy, we put the table in front of the door…”
“Omg my sister and I stayed there recently and I was awoken by a sound like someone was trying to open our door,” another wrote. “It was so loud. We shoved a towel under the door so it wouldn’t open.”
“Never stay at a Sonesta or those types of hotels,” one commenter said. “Pay the cost of higher end hotels especially in larger cities…”
What is a Sonesta hotel?
The American-based chain is massive, with more than 1,100 hotels. But that's relatively recent. The 87-year-old brand was considered a boutique label until the pandemic, when it acquired suddenly floundering properties by brands such as Intercontinental, Candlewood Suites, Knights In, Red Lion, and Holiday Inn.
How to stay safe in a hotel
Van Law Firm advises people to keep their hotel rooms locked 24/7. Patrons should also only open their door for familiar faces.
The firm also says traffickers sometimes pretend to be hotel employees in order to get into rooms. Therefore it's important for staff to have easily recognizable identifiers.
The Lawsuit Information Center shares data on trafficking lawsuits against hotels for "looking the other way." Since March, there have been at least 10 people who have filed such lawsuits.
Commenters left advice regarding what to do in a situation in which you are concerned about trafficking.
“You should have called the police to escort you out of the hotel,” one viewer wrote.
@haleyymasonn The exact name of the hotel - Sonesta Select Atlanta Cumberland Galleria Ballpark #safety #storytime #hotel #atlanta #atl ♬ original sound - haleymason
“We have gotten to the point where we bring a hidden camera with us and plug it in when we leave the hotel rooms,” another shared.
The Daily Dot reached out to Bartoletta via email, but she did not immediately respond. The Sonesta Select Atlanta Cumberland Galleria Ballpark Hotel also did not immediately respond to the Daily Dot’s request for comment.
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