Amy E.
Yelp
I called the Flamingo to book a room at 8:40 PM on a Tuesday. I am an early-middle aged lawyer. I was travelling with my boyfriend who is a farmer. We were travelling from Olympia, WA where I am from to Montana where he is from. We stopped in Coeur d' Alene for a late dinner. We decided to stay the night. The Coeur d' Alene Resort was more than we wanted to spend, so I called the Flamingo, which I saw on the way downtown.
When I called, the man on the phone said they had one room available, but he wanted to know when I would be there, because he was closing the office in 20 minutes. Luckily, we were nearby at a bar/restaurant. The restaurant, which we stumbled upon while driving downtown, was quiet on this particular Tuesday evening and we enjoyed a casual meal with good service. There were only a few other patrons in the restaurant. When I told the clerk at the Flamingo we could be there in a matter of minutes, because we were downtown eating dinner at this particular restaurant/bar, he said they no longer had rooms available.
The clerk proceeded to tell me he was closing early and they did not rent rooms to people who went to this restaurant, because it was a bunch of drunks. (Remember, it is Tuesday at 8:40 PM and my boyfriend and I are middle aged professionals. Clearly, a rowdy bunch.)
I inquired a bit more only to be met with more disparaging remarks about the type of person I must be to be dining at this establishment . Our waiter told us the Flamingo was a dump anyway and we headed up the street to one of the new chain hotels which was perfectly adequate. (Nobody asked where we dined that evening before approving our stay.)
I like small, local hotels. I think they are more charming than the Holiday Inn, etc. But it is people like this clerk that make it so we are conditioned to stay at a chain, because we assume there will be standards for the staff working there and consequences for inappropriate behavior. We assume we will not be treated with the blatant rudeness and baseless discrimination we experienced tonight at the Flamingo. I will be forwarding this review to the management of the hotel, posting it on my Facebook, telling all of my friends, and posting it on other review sites. Appalling.