HotelChatter

JDV Hospitality / San Francisco Hotels / Hotel News / JDV Racial Profiling / → All Tags

JDV Racial Profiling Incident Update

So yesterday we ran a story about a second incident of racial profiling that occurred at a JDV Hospitality hotel, the Cathedral Hill Hotel in San Francisco.

The incident was sent to us by the guest and we posted his side of the story as well as JDV's official response. We wrote that we hadn't heard back from the guest, who goes by Solomon Jones (not Smith as we initially reported) after we emailed him. However, as luck would have it, he responded to our email yesterday afternoon. Not much has changed since his initial submission but we thought we would post his email response, after the jump, so you can draw your own conclusions.

Full email after the jump.

more ›

JDV Hospitality / Chip Conley / San Francisco Hotels / Hotel News / JDV Racial Profiling / → All Tags

Second JDV Hotel Accused of Racial Profiling

Where: 1101 Van Ness Avenue [map], San Francisco, ca, United States

A HOTELCHATTER EXCLUSIVE

And now we interrupt your regularly schedule hotel infotainment programming, with some breaking news where we get all serious and stuff. Sorry for the buzz kill.

Last fall, the Hotel Vitale in San Francisco, a JDV Hospitality hotel, was hit with a very public accusation of racial profiling of an African-American professor, prompting hotelier Chip Conley to place a personal apology in a San Fran-area newspaper (for which he paid $450) as well as to pledge $7,500 to the Women of Color Resource Center. Additionally, JDV implemented additional diversity training at the Hotel Vitale with plans for more classes at other hotels.

As any hotel corporation would be, JDV was eager to put the matter to bed...that is until a second incident of racial profiling was alleged to have happened at their affiliated Cathedral Hill Hotel on December 6, 2006, just a month after the Hotel Vitale incident.

It's now almost April but HotelChatter has just received an account of this incident from the guest, Solomon Smith, who used the HotelChatter handle oracle18, as well as a copy of the incident report submitted by the hotel's general manager. Here in his own words, Smith details what happened:

Like the professor, we were sitting quietly by ourselves, reading a newspaper. Like the professor, we were minorities - I am a black man and my wife is Asian. Like the professor, the employee who confronted us assumed we were loitering and not guests of the property. And like the professor, we were asked to leave even though we had repeatedly told him we were guests waiting to check into the hotel and that he could verify this with the front desk.

This employee was a HOTEL SECURITY GUARD, who never identified himself, who screamed profanities at myself and my wife, and who threatened physical harm to the both of us if we didn't get out immediately. Not once did any of the other hotel employees come to our aide. Finally, after about 10 minutes of the verbal assault, a complete stranger helped us out and called for the hotel GM because he feared the security guard was going to get physical and no one from the hotel was doing a single thing about it.

READ MORE

more ›