Sonesta Atlanta Airport North — Hotel in East Point

The hotel reception greeted us not just with apathy, but with open hostility - possibly because of our ethnicity. He checked us into our room with a sneer and a single room key for the two of us. He offered no information about any amenities or services. My wife asked him, and he answered curtly, with an eye roll; it was as if the words were being dragged out of him, and he managed to avoid being any more helpful than necessary. Shocked by the unconcealed hatred and bigotry, we headed off to our room with the intention of settling in for the night rather than making use of any other hotel amenities as we had originally intended.

We arrived in the room to find that, unsurprisingly, the hostile receptionist had given us a filthy room - reinforcing the impression that the odd encounter wasn't just a product of a receptionist with a bad attitude, but actual hatred on his part. Given that he didn't know anything about us but our apparent ethnicity, the focus of his hatred was clear.

The door of the room opened into musty darkness. Turning on the light revealed worn furnishings and a haphazardly made-up bed with mostly white, but very wrinkled sheets. There was a chunky food residue stuck all over the desk surface. In the bathroom, someone had shotgunned the toilet, and had apparently pulled all of the tissues out of the box before summarily jamming a handful back in. There were flakes of some kind floating in the fecal matter in the toilet. That didn't bear too much thinking about; I hastily closed the toilet lid and flushed it. That eliminated the floating portion of the feces, anyhow. The rest would require a more intensive intervention, and I resigned to leave that for the cleaning staff.

At this point I would ordinarily have gone back to the front desk to ask to be assigned to a room which was more up to standard, but given who was at the front desk, I realized that option didn't exist. We settled in to the bed uneasily, to at least get some rest if not to be truly comfortable. We didn't have the WiFi information - it wasn't offered by the hateful receptionist, nor was it marked on the sleeve of the room key card. The room itself did not have a placard or book with any information about the hotels offerings either. Nevertheless, we found a weak WiFi signal with the hotels name on it, and after several tries we succeeded in establishing an intermittent connection that gave us a few seconds of internet access at a time before dropping. The heat and AC unit was blowing cold air -not ideal given the stormy cold winter weather, but after briefly switching on the heat and smelling the strong burning smell of the hot metal heating element, we opted to just turn it off. The TV turned on to an old school cable interface - not fancy, but comforting, in a way, and we relaxed in front of the TV and eventually fell asleep.

Our stay was thankfully brief, and in the morning we went straight out the shuttle after dropping our singular key at the front desk. There was a different receptionist there, and he was curt and abrupt, but at least not openly hostile. We gladly boarded the shuttle and left this...

Fri Jan 10-Mon Jan 13, 2025

*This is a long read but worth it!

(At the end is my review from 7 years ago.)

We arrived Friday afternoon for the Gafilk (convention) and left on Monday. There were only 2 hand towels, 2 bath towels, 1 small soap to last for the whole weekend and we are 2 people.

*They did mention that housekeeping was once a week now and wrote that if we needed more to tell them.

Saturday

I filled up the form for housekeeping and brought it down. So yes, I did inform them. The guy at the desk said that it may be too late for today (Saturday) but he would send them a message and they would come on tomorrow (Sunday).

Sunday

All day housekeeping was in the hall cleaning out the other rooms. No one came to our room. It's too late to ask for towels. The towels we have are dirty and I will have to reuse them. Both garbage bins were full and needed to be empty. We are leaving in the morning so therefore makes no real sense to contact them.

Monday

After my shower I had to use a hand towel to wipe myself off.

*The coffee maker would not work even when it was plugged. The room store would not close properly and we had to pull it to close. *The toilet paper was broken. *The handle of the cold water came off. *The towel rack on the wall was coming out of the wall. *The toilet seat was wobbly when we arrived but for some strange reason it was solid yesterday. It's like someone had come in to fix it while we were gone but we never mentioned it to anyone and we were not told that someone would come by either.

**This is new as they never did it last year. There is now a hold (refundable) deposit of $150 charged to your card.

I posted some pictures of how we left the room. Other than the bed not made and towels on the floor in the bathroom is pretty clean.

This was my review 7 years ago. I had given it a 5 star:

We come here once a year for Gafilk convention. The only thing I did not like and it was not the end of the world, is that we were three people in the room and when we arrived they were towels only for one person. And afterwards, they would give us towels for two people and we always had to phone downstairs. Other than that, it was ok. The dining room is expensive do expect to pay alot of money.

This hotel has lowered its standards over the years. Last year a friend who stayed here had ice in his room. Another person had water gushing on the floor of her bathroom. And there were/are a myriad of problems over the years.

The convention we go to is held in this hotel so we will be back next Jan 2025. We could go to another hotel but as we are disabled it would be inconvenient for us. But it will be the last time...

The hotel itself was fair. I had a major problem with one of the staff. When we checked in, the front desk staff were just okay. They weren’t overly friendly or accommodating. It took 1 hour to get me checked in due to a large line of about 20 people. There were so many people that had flights delayed and got stuck in Atlanta for the night, us included. I still didn’t understand why it took so long to get us checked in. It should not have taken that long. During the morning before check out time, the housekeeping staff barged in on us. It’s fine to knock and inquire but they came into the room. When I went to check out, which was at check out time of 11am on the dot, I walked downstairs, and set my room keys (still in packet with room number on it) on the front desk and proceeded to walk out. There was again, a line at the front desk. When I set my keys on the desk, one of the staff straight up scolded me like I was a child. She raised her voice and said “don’t just throw your keys on the desk! How are they supposed to know you’re checking out? You need to talk to the front desk staff and tell them!” I assumed that it was obvious that I was checking out due to the fact it was 11am, and my room number was written on the packet. I did not have time to wait in that line and tell them I was checking out. I worked as a front desk employee and manager for 3 years at an award winning choice hotel and guests would put their keys on the desk every day. Most guests just left! If it is check out time, its safe to assume guests are checking out. If they aren’t out of their rooms at 11 then that is their problem. In this situation It was check out time! If I’m not out of my room at 11am that is my problem and then I welcome them to rush me out. I thought this was ridiculous and she made me feel extremely uncomfortable. She scolded me for something so ridiculous and in front of other people. She could have just said “are you checking out? Ok great. How was your stay? In the future we would love to know if you're checking out” Even though it should be obvious but she could have spoken to me like an adult. This is not how you treat a guest. It was a bad experience solely due to how I was treated. This woman needs some major coaching. I didn’t catch her name but she was possibly either in front desk management or maybe housekeeping management. I’d say she was in her late 40s or early 50s, short hair, heavier set...