The hotel provided a printed statement indicating that it had successfully weathered multiple hurricanes and considered itself safe and experienced in such situations. I live in Tampa, which is in Zone A, and we were mandated to evacuate in October 8. My partner chose this hotel based on its claims of safety and expertise regarding hurricanes.
We were placed on the 7th floor, and unfortunately, we experienced significant flooding due to the heavy rain. Water was pouring in from the ceiling, pieces of the ceiling was falling down and when we called the front desk for assistance, we were told that there were no available rooms to move to. This was not true; I noticed that there were only a few cars parked outside, and when I checked online, it showed that rooms were still available for booking.
It seemed that the management and staff simply did not want to deal with the situation. All the rooms on the east side of the 7th floor were flooding. From the hallway we can see all the water coming from multiple rooms while other rooms on the opposite side of the building were perfectly fine. I have no idea why the staff didn't offer us a different room.
In the end, I had to use more than 20 towels to try to stop the water from coming in, we did not have any sleep and we did not receive any refund or compensation for our troubles.
