Hotel is accused of price gouging
With no power or heat in his home and outside temperatures well below freezing during last month’s winter storm, San Antonio resident Randy Anderson took his family to a La Quinta Inn on the Southeast Side to escape the cold.
Anderson, his wife, three daughters and 101year-old grandmother hunkered down in the hotel for five days.
It turned into a costly stay.
La Quinta jacked up the prices on the family’s two hotel rooms to $199 a night each for the last three nights of their stay, from $74 a night the first two nights, Anderson says in an affidavit.
The Anderson family is now part of a civil complaint the Texas attorney general filed this week alleging the hotel owner gouged customers during the storm by charging two or three times typical room rates.
“This gross exploitation of Texans in dire need of shelter during historic low temperatures will not be tolerated,” Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement this week. “Companies looking to profit from this tragic
event that left millions of Texans without power or water will be aggressively investigated and prosecuted.”
Claudia Young, general manager of the La Quinta Inn by Wyndham San Antonio Brooks City Base, which is operated by Everyoung Hospitality, defended its actions during the storm. The price surge simply was an issue of supply and demand, she said.
The La Quinta’s occupancy climbed during the storm as more customers — including those whose homes were without heat and water — checked in.
“We did nothing wrong,” Young said Friday, adding the rates the hotel charged weren’t excessive, given the high demand for its rooms. “We did not charge $900 a night.”
Young said the hotel always charges higher rates when it is full, just like it charges lower rates when occupancy is low. Its practices are no different from other San Antonio hotels.
She accused Paxton’s office of targeting her and the owners out of racial motivations.
“The state is bringing charges against us because we are Chinese,” Young said from a small room off the hotel’s lobby. “They want to make an example of someone, and they are singling us out.”
Paxton’s office didn’t respond Friday to a request for comment.
The lawsuit says the hotel never topped 90 percent occupancy during its busiest night last month.
It “used this misrepresentation” that the hotel was full “to induce customers to pay the higher rate,” the complaint adds.
The La Quinta, at 3180 Goliad, is a franchise of Wyndham Hotels & Resorts.
“We require that hotels comply with all local, state and federal laws, including those laws which relate to the setting of prices,” Wyndham spokesman Rob Myers said in an email Friday. “While this hotel is independently owned and operated, please know we take these allegations seriously.”
Hotel staff told customers that room rates had increased because of the surge in demand, according Anderson’s and others’ affidavits.
Anderson and his family checked in not knowing how long they would stay. The duration depended on when the power and heat returned to their home.
On the Andersons’ second morning at the hotel, he asked to extend their stay and was told the rate had jumped to $199 a night for each room.
“We asked why, and the general manager told us … there was a huge demand and a small supply of rooms and if we did not want our rooms, someone else would take them for the $199 a night,” he said in his sworn statement filed with the lawsuit.
A Texas couple who regularly stay at the hotel while visiting family had booked eight nights starting Feb. 11 at a daily rate of $65.34, which included a military discount. When they asked Feb. 18 to extend their stay an additional four nights, the front desk manager said the rate would be $189 a night.
“When I asked why the rate had gone up so much, they told me that they were almost full because everyone was trying to get away from the cold and had no heat or water at their homes,” Sharon Oldfield said in a sworn statement.
These customers’ experiences were not the norm for most of those who sought refuge in area hotels during the storm, said Richard Oliver, director of partner and community relations at Visit San Antonio.
“During a very difficult period, almost every hotel in San Antonio responded to the best of their ability to expand beyond a brand promise to the necessity of answering consumer needs,” Oliver said. “They did it the best way they could, often with skeleton staffs and their own adverse situations, to provide hospitality when it was desperately needed. Anything that detoured from that commitment was an aberration.”
Paxton sued the La Quinta Inn owner for allegedly violating the state’s Deceptive Trade Practices Act, which the complaint says prohibits “taking advantage of a disaster by offering, demanding, selling and/or leasing fuel, food, medicine or other necessity at an exorbitant or excessive price.”
Paxton seeks civil penalties of up to $10,000 for each violation and up to $250,000 for each violation involving consumers 65 years of age or older.
His office filed the lawsuit Thursday in state District Court in San Antonio.
Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, Paxton filed at least two pricegouging complaints against businesses he accused of taking unfair advantage of Texas residents.
Paxton alleges that Houstonbased Auctions Unlimited sold face masks, hand sanitizer and cleaning supplies to consumers at prices that greatly exceeded their normal cost.
Auctions Unlimited filed a brief denial in May. Not much has happened in the case since then, though the court docket indicates it’s set for trial in January.
Paxton’s office filed another suit against Mississippi-based Calmaine Foods Inc., described as the dominant egg supplier in Texas. The attorney general accused the company of hiking prices for eggs from about $1 a dozen to more than $3 a dozen.
A state District Court judge in Harris County granted Cal-maine’s request to have the case tossed. Paxton has appealed to the 1st Court of Appeals.