Hotels are required to allow guests to stay with their service dogs, according to the ADA. Unfortunately, the Sheraton Perimeter hotel in Georgia didn’t follow this rule. A woman posted a video where she was confronting the hotel manager, named Tony, and an employee named Ricky after they refused to allow her inside. She already had a reservation but they allegedly didn’t want her to stay with her service dog. The woman kept asking Tony if he had just denied her staying with her service dog. Instead of answering, he was telling her “please” and pointing toward the door. As she kept asking the same question, he told her, “We are not pet-friendly.” That was when the guest clarified that a service dog wasn’t a pet.
The Georgia woman’s video went on for some time because it then showed her asking for the corporate number. “Don’t make issue here,” Tony told her instead of actually meeting her request. The bad treatment of the guest continued because he then told her, “Please step out of my property.” So he was basically kicking her out for asking for her rights. He even had the audacity to tell her to check for the corporate number on Google. The woman and Tony kept going back and forth as she then demanded that he show her the policy saying they can’t allow service dogs in the hotel. Of course, he didn’t show her anything. From her words, it also appeared that they were refusing to refund her. This only encouraged her to stay there and wait for the police to come.
As Tony was apparently calling the police, the Georgia guest kept filming as she went outside the hotel. She didn’t plan on leaving, though. She only went outside to see if there were any signs against service dogs’ presence. There weren’t any. The video then cuts to her arguing with Tony once again. In this new part, he told her that he won’t be refunding her. Instead, he said that she needed to contact the booking platform she used. At this point, the woman was quite frustrated. She started telling both Tony and Ricky that they would get in trouble. In addition to this, she informed Tony that she would make him get more training.
Finally, a police officer showed up at the Georgia hotel to try to resolve the dispute. Unfortunately, a lot of the conversation between the officer and Tony was unclear due to the noise at the hotel. What was clear, though, was that the officer asked the woman if she was at the hotel last week. It turned out that she was at the hotel then and had her service dog with her without facing any problems. The guest was also ready to show the officer her receipt if needed. It appeared that the employees were claiming that she didn’t show her dog when she stayed there before. Of course, the officer found that weird and questioned how she would have gotten inside with it. That was when they started saying something about having two exits.
The Georgia officer was probably on the woman’s side at this point because he mentioned next how all Sheraton hotels are service pet friendly. Tony responded that some people say their dogs are service dogs but they end up not being so. He had a problem with dogs barking inside the rooms as well. Again, the officer repeated the Americans with Disabilities Act. Unfortunately, the video ended there so it wasn’t clear what happened following that. The woman still posted it and asked for help with getting her in contact with someone from the hotel’s corporate.
The majority of people supported the guest after seeing the original video. Some ended up changing their minds when they saw another video she posted that showed what breed her service dog was: it was a bully. That made many believe that it wasn’t a service dog. According to Autism Assistance Dog, “Pitbulls technically can be service dogs, as the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) explicitly states that any dog breed can function as a service dog, According to the ADA, a service animal must be a dog of any breed or any size which is trained to perform a task directly related to a person’s disability.” The woman did say that her dog was trained to be a service dog.
Aside from responding to people’s comments on her dog’s breed, she also posted an update recently on how her complaint went. According to her, the hotel emailed her back and apologized. They asked to have a phone conversation with her, but she didn’t plan on doing so. Her plan is not to talk with them anymore until she gets a lawyer involved. If her dog was actually a service dog then she was definitely mistreated. Plus, even if it wasn’t, the way Tony talked to her was still unprofessional.
People Reacting to the Georgia Woman’s Video
Those who believed that the Georgia woman’s dog was a service animal left comments supporting her and criticizing the hotel’s manager. Since there is the ADA, one person wrote, “He is breaking federal law.” Another person agreed and said, “Their ‘policies’ don’t override federal law smh.” Others wanted Tony to face consequences as someone else commented, “He needs to be fired immediately.” One woman even claimed that she contacted the hotel as she said, “I’m nosey as hell and I called the hotel. The front desk agent said they DO accept service animals, and when I asked if Tony was still employed he said no.” The video definitely didn’t make him look good.
There were also a lot of comments that believed that the Georgia woman’s dog wasn’t a service pet. “That’s 100% not a service dog,” one person wrote. This made another person reply, “It 100% is, if the officer was backing her up I’m assuming he asked her the questions he legally could and carried on, any breed and size of breed can be a service dog, why is that so hard to understand or research.” Someone else said, “ADA need to fix their guidelines because that ain’t no service dog.” These kinds of comments made one TikTok user write, “To all of these people, why can’t her dog be a service dog? Because of his breed? That is not how that works. If a dog is trained to be a service animal they are a service animal.” The law is there for a reason.
