A Thai woman said she would file a complaint about a South Korean hotel which abruptly blacklisted her hours before check-in because Thais were unreliable.
Seething Twitter user GuideGig1 vented to social media after the highly rated Incheon Airport Best Guesthouse suddenly sent her a slew of discriminatory messages before canceling her booking on the last day of her 13-day trip with three other British friends.
“Thai always no show. You know same as you… Poor people poor life,” a hotel staff member wrote in rugged English, according to what were presented as Whatsapp messages of their exchange. The tourist said she would file a complaint about the hotel upon her return to Thailand.
Reached for comment, the woman traveler said she had submitted a complaint to Booking.com but saw no other recourse. “The hotel’s in Korea, what can authorities here even do?” the woman said, declining to give her name for fear of further hotelier hostility.
Messaged via Whatsapp for comment and its side of the story this morning, the hotel blocked a Coconuts Bangkok reporter after offering this terse response: “beat it.”
According to screenshots of the original purported exchange that took place during the weekend, the problem arose when the traveling Thai needed to update her payment information.
“I lost my card and got a new one but forgot to update my information. … I got an email from Booking.com telling me to change it within 24 hours,” GuideGig wrote. However, about an hour later, she received a Whatsapp message from the hotel asking her to update the information quickly or else it would “take another reservation.”
After she explained that the email had indicated she had 23 hours to do so, the staff clapped back with the nastiness. After canceling her reservation, a message told the woman her photo would be sent to “all the guesthouses in Incheon.”
“Blacklist No.112,” it wrote.
#รีวิวเกาหลี ประสบการณ์โดนโรงแรมที่อินชอนยกเลิกห้องพักเพราะคิดว่าเราเป็นพวกผีน้อย แถมโรงแรมยังด่าคนไทยว่าเป็น พวกคนจน ชีวิตต่ำตม อีก #incheonairportbestguesthouse pic.twitter.com/dX4iRln78o
— U n k n o w n (@GuideGig1) June 23, 2019
Many retweeted and commented on the woman’s posts to share their own hotel nightmares. Many were angry at the staff’s attitude toward Thais. As of noon Tuesday, her original message had been retweeted more than 57,000 times.
“‘Poor people poor life,’ that’s so discriminatory. I cannot accept that. That’s dissing an entire culture,” user Medsci_mas wrote.
“I’ve also experienced something similar. At that time, I was checking in at 9pm, the hotel said since there was a big concert and we didn’t call, they didn’t think we’d show. Luckily for us, we had a local friend who argued with them. They told the hotel that they were going to file a police report so they gave us KR₩20,000 (about THB530) for our trouble,” Keng_Cafe tweeted Sunday.
Correction: A previous version of this story contained an image misidentifying the Incheon Best Airport Guesthouse. We regret the error.
Update: This story has been updated with comments from GuideGig1.
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