Renaissance is a chain of approximately 170 upscale hotels located all over the world. The brand itself belongs to the Marriott company, specifically their “premium” tier of offerings, while individual Renaissance Hotels typically belong to local franchisees.
Unfortunately, the Renaissance brand’s promise of “unexpected” experiences doesn’t always come true in the safe and pleasant way its marketing content implies.
Below, we’ll go over common reasons why you might need to sue a Renaissance Hotel. If at any point you would prefer to speak directly with a lawyer, feel free to reach out by phone or chat.
If you’re wondering whether you can sue a Renaissance Hotel for an injury or loss you suffered on the premises, start by asking yourself these questions:
If the answer to all three is yes, then there’s a good chance you have a case.
So, for example, if another guest dropped a drink on the floor, and you immediately slipped on it, you probably won’t be able to collect compensation from the hotel, because there was no reasonable opportunity for the staff to prevent the spill or clean it up in time to stop the accident.
On the other hand, if you slipped on a patch of mold on your balcony, reported it, and then slipped again more seriously on the same hazard ten days later, that’s a case worth pursuing.
That second example is based on an actual complaint against a Renaissance Hotel in South Carolina. The real guest in that case also reported that she had repeatedly rearranged her deck furniture to prevent herself from stepping on the mold, but that housekeeping staff kept putting it back, while ignoring the mold itself.
Of course, it’s not always easy for the victim of a harmful incident to answer those three questions at a glance. If you’re not sure how strong your case is, it’s a good idea to talk it out with a lawyer.
Some safety issues, and the necessary precautions for managing them, are universal. All hotels have floors, so all hotels need to watch out for slipping and tripping hazards. Other potential safety threats, however, vary depending on the hotel’s design, location, or amenities.
Swimming pools are one of the most popular amenities hotels can offer, but unfortunately, they’re also one of the most dangerous, especially for children.
The Renaissance brand’s most recent drowning accident happened less than a year ago, at the location in Glenview, Illinois. Bystanders found a 4-year-old boy unconscious in the pool, pulled him out, and attempted CPR. He was still alive when emergency crews delivered him to a local hospital, but ultimately did not survive his injuries.
Going back farther, it’s clear that certain Renaissance Hotels have struggled more with pool safety than others. Specifically, the location in Tinicum Township, Pennsylvania has lost at least two young guests this way, first a 5-year-old in 2008, and then a 6-year-old in 2019.
The most effective way hotels can make pools safer is to employ qualified lifeguards. Even among hotels that refuse to make this investment, however, pool safety records vary drastically from one location to another. These differences aren’t a matter of luck. They almost always come down to concrete differences in how the pools are managed.
For example, safer hotels reduce the risk of pool accidents by:
At the end of the day, hotels that choose to have pools are responsible for the extra care and investment it takes to run a pool safely. If you’ve been injured or lost a loved one in a Renaissance Hotel pool, there’s a good chance you’re owed compensation.
Unlike the decision of whether or not to provide a pool, hotels don’t have total control over the crime rate of their neighborhoods. They do have more influence than guests typically realize, however.
If a hotel makes itself welcoming to crime, such as by allowing anonymous check-ins and having no security cameras, repeat offenders may begin treating that hotel as a safe haven for harmful behavior, putting other guests and neighbors at risk.
Even if a hotel isn’t the cause of a local crime problem, the owner still has a duty to evaluate the risk of crime honestly, and invest in security accordingly.
There certainly seem to be some Renaissance Hotels that could do with a security upgrade. Within the last two years alone:
If you’ve been attacked or lost a loved one to violence at a Renaissance Hotel, it might seem like a random event that could have happened anywhere. With a little investigation, however, a lawyer might find that your incident was part of an ongoing pattern that’s overdue to be addressed.
All hotels, regardless of location or history, need to be aware of the possibility that sex traffickers may attempt to use their rooms as a staging ground for sexual exploitation and abuse. If this ever happens, the staff must be prepared to take the side of the victims and call for police intervention when needed.
Hotels that choose to support or simply ignore sex traffickers, in order to profit from their activities, are legally liable for the harm those traffickers inflict on their victims.
This is more than just an abstract legal concept. It’s a pervasive issue throughout the hospitality industry, and one that has allegedly come up at Renaissance Hotels many times.
In December of 2019, an anonymous woman sued the Marriott company for allegedly allowing her to be sex trafficked out of several Marriott hotels near the Philadelphia International Airport, including a Renaissance brand location. According to her complaint, her trafficker openly abused and prostituted her out of those hotels from 2009 through 2011, without any interference from staff.
The case ended with Marriott paying an undisclosed settlement to the plaintiff, and receiving permission to sue its own franchisees for their role in her victimization.
The year 2019 was a busy one for sex trafficking lawsuits all over the U.S. Even though willingly harboring sex trafficking had already been illegal for years, there was effectively no precedent for holding hotels accountable for sex trafficking until a series of high-profile lawsuits against the hospitality industry in 2019. After those first successes, dozens more sex trafficking survivors came forward to claim compensation for long-buried wrongs.
Unfortunately, this sudden wave of legal accountability did not put an end to sex trafficking in American hotels in general, or, apparently, at Renaissance Hotels in particular.
In April of 2023, police arrested a couple on sex trafficking charges at the Renaissance Hotel in St. Louis, Missouri, and recovered two teenage girls who had gone missing in Texas. The girls were both wards of the state, common targets for sex traffickers.
Then, in November of that year, a 16-year-old girl called police to report that Jimmie Gardner — husband of Chief Judge Leslie Abrams Gardner of the Middle District of Georgia — had assaulted her at the Renaissance Hotel in Tampa, Florida, after she refused to have sex with him for money.
Most recently, in March of 2024, an undercover officer rescued a 17-year-old girl from a Renaissance Hotel in Queens, New York, and arrested the sex trafficker who had attempted to haggle with him over her. The trafficker had apparently been exploiting the girl ever since picking her up from a migrant shelter three months earlier.
The Marriott company and the Renaissance brand have had plenty of chances to improve their handling of possible sex trafficking situations. If you have also been coerced in any way into performing commercial sex acts at a Renaissance Hotel, there’s a good chance you’re owed compensation.
If you’ve been hurt or lost someone at a Renaissance Hotel, you can set yourself up for the best possible outcome by following these steps:
The Stoddard Firm is deeply passionate about helping victims of crime, preventable accidents, and general corporate negligence get the compensation they need to get their lives back on track. We also believe in holding huge companies like Marriott accountable when they put profits over safety. We’re experts in personal injury, wrongful death, premises liability, negligent security, franchise law, sex trafficking law, and all other areas of law commonly associated with hotel lawsuits.
If you’d like to discuss your case with a hotel lawyer in Atlanta today, reach out through our online chat function, or at 678-RESULTS, 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 ]
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