Waterfront Hotel favors gamblers over other professionals
Gamblers are among the most privileged group of people in Cebu City. Drive your car to Waterfront Hotel in Lahug, Cebu City and when you look for a parking space, you will find out that the hotel has reserved an entire floor of its parking area for nobody else but the patrons of the gambling casino. To emphasize the preference by the hotel management for gamblers, it has chosen the very floor that is nearest to the hotel lobby. All other customers are so insignificant that they are pushed to the farthest corners of squalid environment.
In order to highlight my comparison, let me point out my biased perception of what could be the extremes of moral spheres. I have not seen a single parking slot for the religious like priests, bishops, pastors, elders or imams and certainly not a parking bay for the members of the judiciary. Now, if teachers enjoy the honor of being the noblest professionals, that is not the mentality of the hotel for there is no reserved parking space for them
It is very possible that the hotel has the imprimatur of the Cebu City administration of His Honor Mayor Michael L. Rama. This kind of discrimination is, to my mind, so special, that without the blessings of the city administrators, it cannot exist. Gamblers must be of premium breed as to rate a privileged ranking by the city government. If that is so, it could be based upon the indispensable contribution of the gamblers to the progress of the city. Without them, this queen city of the south could not have become so progressive.
On the other hand, it is also likely that the city government has not been notified by the hotel management of this special attention given to gamblers. The city officialdom may not be aware that there is this royal treatment for this niche of hotel customers. Waterfront might just have considered the status of the patrons of the casino as incomparably prominent over the other hotel clientele such that it is, in their mind, very important to favor them.
When the building plan of the hotel was submitted for approval by government authorities, it must have contained a number of parking bays computed in relation to the total volume of building users. At the very least, the number of rooms and the projected available commercial spaces were considered in determining the needed parking bays. Among other issues, the approval of the plan hinged on the compliance of the minimum number of parking bays. I am sure that such plan did not indicate a special allotment for gamblers only because the gambling casino was not a part of that plan. The casino was located somewhere else.
The obvious effect of the hotel's assignment of an entire floor of its parking area for gamblers only is to diminish the number of available parking spaces. Before the hotel isolated a floor of the parking space and reserved it only for gamblers, there were so many hotel customers who could secure their vehicles in the allotted area. Necessarily, when the hotel management denied the other customers the use of a part of the original parking area, it changed the basis of the approval of the building plan. In other words, as the ratio of the required space in relation to the volume of available occupants the building is supposed to take in is impaired, the hotel building violates the parameters of the building code.
I noticed this when I went to the hotel few days ago. A car ahead of mine and whose owner, was obviously a non-gambler, was refused accommodation at the area reserved for gamblers only. There was no car then at that parking space but the rest of the parking bays were full. So, the man had to go out of the hotel premises and parked at the IT park. He was discriminated against and I had the same experience.