Homewood Suites is an extended-stay hospitality brand owned by the Hilton company. The vast majority of its hundreds of locations are franchised, meaning they’re owned and operated by smaller local companies under contract with Hilton.
Boasting “apartment style” living, Homewood Suites is one of several hospitality brands that host long-term guests without ever quite entering into an official landlord-tenant relationship with them. Hotel guests enjoy fewer protections under the law than tenants, but they do have a right to safety. As such, there are many scenarios where it’s appropriate to sue Homewood Suites.
Below, we’ll go over common reasons you might need to pursue this option. If at any point you would prefer to speak directly with a lawyer, feel free to reach out by phone or chat.
Hotel owners, like all land owners, have a legal duty to keep an eye out for potential hazards on their premises, and to take all reasonable steps to prevent foreseeable harm to their guests.
One of the most classic examples of a foreseeable premises accident is a slip-and-fall or trip-and-fall on an unsafe walking surface.
As soon as a hotel knows, or should know, that a walking surface has become slippery, cluttered, or uneven, it has a responsibility to correct the problem. If that can’t happen immediately, the hotel must warn guests of the danger in the meantime.
In spite of the stereotype of slip-and-fall and trip-and-fall accidents being trivial, they can easily cause serious, life-altering, or even life-threatening injuries. There have been quite a few alleged incidents of unsuspecting Homewood Suites guests slipping and hurting themselves:
It’s worth noting, Homewood Suites may not actually have an above average number of slip-and-fall accidents — it may simply put less effort than other brands into keeping these incidents quiet when they do happen. Still, under perfect management, these kinds of dangers would be nearly nonexistent.
The owner’s responsibility to identify and eliminate hazards on a hotel’s floors applies to every other part of a hotel as well. For more complex features, such as electrical systems and elevators, this means scheduling expert maintenance at appropriate intervals.
Two of the most potentially lethal features of an average hotel are the pool and the gas-burning appliances, typically heaters and boilers. Homewood Suites has had trouble with both over the years.
In 2013, three separate Homewood Suites had to evacuate due to a buildup of poisonous carbon monoxide from malfunctioning heating equipment, one in Virginia Beach, Virginia one in Lexington, Kentucky, and one in Glastonbury, Connecticut.
Only the Glastonbury location had working CO detectors in place to warn of the problem. In the other two cases, the staff or guests reported the smell of a gas leak, and the fire department discovered the dangerous CO levels while investigating.
It’s incredibly lucky that no one was harmed across these three incidents. Both natural gas and CO are poisonous and naturally odorless, but natural gas sold for fuel use must have odor artificially added for safety. CO, on the other hand, is a by-product of a malfunctioning or poorly ventilated fuel-burning appliance. It’s possible for CO buildup to happen without the presence of a natural gas leak, creating a deadly atmosphere that can’t be noticed without purpose-built detectors.
That same year, a 9-year-old boy was found unconscious in the Homewood Suites pool in Latham, New York. He suffered a cardiac arrest, but thankfully, doctors were able to stabilize him at a nearby hospital.
Not so luckily, the same thing has happened to at least two other people in Homewood Suites swimming pools since then — a 3-year-old boy in Katy, Texas and an adult man in Hamilton, Ontario.
A group of 13 children also suffered chemical burns and other symptoms from exposure to excessive levels of chlorine in a Homewood Suites pool in Denver, Colorado.
Whenever a hotel makes a choice like providing a swimming pool, or using gas instead of electrical heating, the owner needs to consider all the associated safety concerns and make a thorough plan for managing them. Otherwise, issues like these can crop up suddenly, harming guests and opening the hotel to liability.
When anticipating possible threats to guests, hotel owners must also consider threats that come from the surrounding environment, both natural and human-made. A hotel in an area prone to earthquakes should have its heavy furniture secured against tipping over, one in an area prone to tornados should have a sheltering plan, and one in an area prone to violent crime should have proportionate security.
There are many Homewood Suites locations around the U.S that are no stranger to violence. In fact, within the last year alone:
Ideally, incidents like these should never happen at all. Realistically, they at least shouldn’t happen twice in the same place. Once violent crime becomes a known issue at a specific hotel, or in the surrounding area, that hotel has a duty to prioritize security.
There are plenty of small changes that have been proven to reduce the risk of violence on hotel premises, such as keeping public areas well-lit and under visible camera surveillance, and requiring guests to check in with a photo ID. In some cases, however, there’s no substitute for a qualified security guard presence. Hotels have a duty to recognize that, too.
All hotels have a responsibility to watch for signs of sex trafficking, to refuse any income they have reason to believe comes from sex trafficking, and to help protect victims any way they reasonably can.
Sex trafficking is such a common issue in the hospitality industry that no hotel can claim ignorance of the threat it poses. Unfortunately, it’s also so profitable that many hotels are willing to side with perpetrators over victims.
To the credit of the Homewood Suites brand, there have been a few occasions where staff members have reportedly helped trafficking victims escape from their exploiters.
Specifically, in 2015, a 16-year-old girl was able to get an employee at the Homewood Suites in Bel Air, Maryland to help her call 911. The girl reported that she was being sex trafficked, and provided police with detailed descriptions of the two men who had sold her out of various hotels around Maryland and Virginia, leading to both of their convictions.
There was also an incident in 2021, when the manager of the Homewood Suites in Arlington, Massachusetts called police to report that a man who had been banned from the hotel was in one of their rooms with a woman. In that case, management suspected the man of sex trafficking, but also of stealing TVs from the hotel. How the hotel would have responded if the man’s activities had not harmed their business is unclear.
These are also far from the only sex trafficking cases associated with Homewood Suites.
In roughly the last twelve years, at least eight people have been convicted of sex trafficking and related offenses, for activities that took place partly or wholly at Homewood Suites. Among them were a prolific child pornographer in Minnesota, a couple who scammed women into providing commercial sex for parties they hosted in Massachusetts hotels, and a man who lured a teenage girl to a Homewood Suites in Baton Rouge, raped her, and threatened to hurt her family if she tried to escape.
Most of these horrific scenarios ended and came to light only when the victims found ways to contact police or family members on their own.
Survivors of sex trafficking have the right to sue anyone who willfully enabled their exploitation for the sake of profit. Hotels are often ideal defendants for survivors who want to claim fair compensation and help drive change in the industry.
After an accident or violent altercation at a Homewood Suites, you can protect your future options by following these steps:
The Stoddard Firm has experts on franchise law and the hospitality industry, as well as general personal injury, wrongful death, premises liability, negligent security, and sex trafficking law.
We’ll work with you to piece together exactly what happened to you or your family, and what could have been done to prevent it. We’ll be honest about whether you have a strong case against the Hilton company itself, or whether it’s in your best interest to focus on a local Homewood Suites franchisee, their insurance company, or a specific maintenance or security contractor. Our top priority is always to get you the best possible outcome for your case.
To get started talking to an Atlanta hotel lawyer today, reach out at 678-RESULTS or through our online chat function for a free consultation.
Matt Stoddard is a professional, hardworking, ethical advocate. He routinely faces some of the nation’s largest companies and some of the world’s largest insurers – opponents who have virtually unlimited resources. In these circumstances, Mr. Stoddard is comfortable. Mr. Stoddard provides his strongest efforts to his clients, and he devotes the firm’s significant financial resources to presenting the strongest case possible on their behalf. Matt understands that his clients must put their trust in him. That trust creates an obligation for Matt to work tirelessly on their behalf, and Matt Stoddard does not take that obligation lightly. [ Attorney Bio ]
Tell us about your concern and request a free, no obligation, confidential legal consultation.
Last month, OSHA concluded its investigation into the car wreck that injured eight crew members on the set of the upcoming Eddie Murphy action movie, The Pickup. According to OSHA’s findings, Armored Film, LLC and Amazon MGM Studios did not commit any workplace safety violations. The crash took place in April, during a second unit stunt shoot here in Atlanta. Second unit filming focuses on s...
