When staying in travel lodgings like hotels, most travelers are expecting to have a safe stay.
One guest of a Marriott W hotel is advising guests to stay away from it after he says he was nearly walked in on by staff while asleep, and suspects that his things had been rifled through after he discovered money missing from his wallet.
In a video posted to TikTok by content creator Will Fanene (user @viliamufanene on TikTok), who previously gained attention online for calling out T-Mobile over higher phone bills with additional fees, he says his stay at the W Hotel in Chicago, Ill. did not go as smoothly as he had hoped based on the reviews for the hotel.
A suspicious stay
“Do not stay at the W Hotel City Center downtown, there’s a high probability you’ll get robbed,” he says in the video. “I thought my stuff was positioned weird when I walked back into the room. I later found out I was missing some money, but I just assumed that I must have lost it, that’s on me. But on the last day at checkout, staff tried to get into our room twice.”
He describes an instance in which he caught an employee of the hotel attempting to get into the room after he had already been woken up by a similar attempt to get through the door that was ultimately thwarted by him having the latch up to secure it.
“They didn’t knock or nothing, there wasn’t no receipt under the door, none of that,” he says. “If we didn’t have the latch up, they would have been in the room while we were sleeping. Use that latch.”
He shares how the second time, he “caught the guy in the hallway and [he] asked him why he was trying to get into the room.”
“He said that somebody called and said the door was broken,” the creator recalls. “I said, nah, we just woke up. Nobody called you from our room, and I heard somebody trying to get in about 10 minutes ago, too. So I went downstairs—at this point, I don’t know if this guy works there or not—I went downstairs to complain, and they told us that the system had us checked out.”
When he asked the front desk employee about the attempts to get into the room by hotel staff, he says he was brushed off and the employee apologized for disturbing their sleep, and said staff members might have tried to enter the room because they were erroneously marked as checked out.
“He says he fixed it in the system or whatever,” he says. “15 minutes later, housekeeper knocks and says sorry, the system says that y’all are out. Now they’re just trying to cover themselves, it was pretty obvious what they were trying to do.”
He says he later reported the incident to corporate but had not heard back by the time he shared the video.
@viliamufanene Do not stay at @W Hotels in Chicago #storytime #hotelreview ♬ original sound – amuuso
A seemingly common experience
Fanene shares how he searched for the hotel’s reviews online and noticed his experience was not an isolated incident.
“I looked online and it seems this exact same thing happened to other people,” he claims, providing several screenshots of bad reviews. “You look at the reviews, they’ve got reviews of people saying that they’re missing stuff, people just trying to get into the room, same thing. Everything I’m saying now has happened to other people.”
The Daily Dot has reached out to Fanene via comment on the video and TikTok direct message, as well as Marriott via email regarding the video.
Reviews for the hotel are mixed, with the W receiving a rating of four out of five stars. Some guests shared that they had great experiences staying there, while others wrote that they had similar issues as Fanene.
This is not the first time a hotel guest—not necessarily at Marriott hotels—has taken to TikTok to call out their lodgings for a bad experience. A guest of a Disney hotel claimed that her room was subject to checks during her stay, with employees entering her room at any moment. Another guest of a different hotel chain says she was protected from harm by a strange man who attempted to enter her room using a similar tactic as Fanene—using the latch on her door.
Several viewers suggested different authorities and outlets that the poster could report the situation to, to prompt a response from the company.
“Report this to the better business bureau,” one commenter wrote. “Corporate has to respond to your complaint.”
“You want a response from corporate?” another said. “Call several new stations find one that will take your story. Call the Steve Harvey radio show.”
“BBB, Attorney General, CFB and this post is excellent,” one wrote.
Others suggested ways he could add extra security to his hotel stays, regardless of where he goes.
“Start getting portable hidden cameras when traveling domestic or international,” one commenter wrote.
“Always travel with an old school door stop to prevent someone from entering your room,” another advised. “The door latch can be compromised.”
“Future note what we do is put our extra ring camera and when we check into our room I put it facing the door for added security,” a commenter wrote.
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