IHG Hotel Worker Decides Black Woman Does Not Look Like A Guest, Calls Police When She Eats The Free Breakfast

A front desk employee at one of IHG’s Avid Hotel properties in Austin confronted a Black woman over free breakfast and eventually called the police on her. She said she was a registered guest who redeemed points for her room to escape from domestic violence. The employee was sure she didn’t belong, and was just scamming breakfast.

Avid is IHG’s bare-bones limited-service brand. Breakfast is one of the few tangible benefits they offer, included for all guests.

• The hotel employee stops her in the breakfast area and demands to know whether she is staying at the property. She responds, “Do I not look like a guest?”

• He tells her, “No, you do not. I have not seen you,” and presses for her name.

• She refuses says she will simply sit down and eat, he calls 911, telling the dispatcher she is “causing a scene” and suggesting she may have mental-health issues.

A woman was approached on Thanksgiving in the Breakfast area of the Hilton hotel she was staying at & asked if she had a room there. There were tons of white people there in the same area,but this racist employee didn’t question them.She stood her ground & he was wrong! Fire him pic.twitter.com/KD77PLvjhC

— Suzie rizzio (@Suzierizzo1) November 28, 2025

According to the woman, his first words were not “good morning” or “happy holidays,” but “do you have a room here.” When she answered that she did, she says he told her she did not. When she asked how he could possibly know that, she says he replied that she didn’t have a key, and that he was “sure” she didn’t have one because he’d watched her walk in the front door.

She points out that guests use that same exterior door, and that if he had bothered to check the cameras he would have seen her coming out of a room before heading outside. She asks whether he checked the footage. He admits he has not. She asks whether he knows whether she has a room. He says he does not.

In her telling, there were five or six white guests sitting at the table, and he did not question any of them. She tells him “that was racist as hell,” and that his assumption that she did not belong in the space – based entirely on how she looked and which door she used – is the reason she pulled out her phone and started recording.

Finally, she holds up her key and asks whether it was appropriate to insist she did not have one?

People are absolutely showing up at hotels for free breakfast and leaving without being guests. If you run a midscale property off the highway, you will get locals who decide that “free” breakfast means free for anyone who wanders in. So there’s a legitimate interest in managing food cost.

However, picking out the only black woman in the lobby and accusing her of theft isn’t going to end well. You had darned better be right. Consider checking everyone as they enter the breakfast area, asking for room keys, checking name and room number against a list or collecting coupons – or accept this instance where you suspect freeloading because the savings aren’t worth the reputational cost when you’re wrong.

If you see someone at breakfast you do not recognize, you can walk over, say “good morning,” explain that you have had issues with non-guests coming in for food, and ask to see a key or confirm their room number. And do that for everyone.

In any case, the escalation here is insane. Even if she had been a random walk-in off the street, he’s calling the police over a bowl of cereal and cold items. The marginal cost of that breakfast is a few dollars at most. Calling the police and telling them you have a possibly unstable person on property because you do not recognize her is disproportionate to the stakes.

The woman filed a complaint with IHG corporate and was told to follow up again with the property manager, who declined to extend her stay. That’s poor handling by IHG, but very much on-brand to defer back to the problem property to decide how to police itself.