Mario Bonds, a fitness motivator and actor best known from his time on “The Glee Project,” has taken to TikTok following an incident at Hampton Inn Suites on Peachtree, one of hospitality juggernaut Hilton’s several hotel brands.
Bonds, who is visually impaired, was visiting Atlanta when he decided to book a stay at the Hilton trademarked hotel. Bonds entered one of the hotel’s elevators, where he quickly realized he was unable to operate any of the controls. As seen in his TikTok video, most of the elevator’s controls are touch screen. The buttons that do exist on the elevator’s control panel do not feature braille.
“My name is Mario Bonds and I’m totally blind,” he told TikTok. “I don’t feel blind when I walk with my cane. I don’t feel disabled when I have to feel around your stuff, but when things are inaccessible, I’m forced to live with my disability.
“I’m at the Hampton Inn Suites by Hilton, address 1231 West Peachtree Street in Midtown, Atlanta, Georgia. I spent 10 minutes trying to go and get food (while) stuck on the elevator, because — if you look here first (Bonds gestures to the control panel) — the elevator is touchscreen. There’s a touchscreen panel here. Then down here they provide a keypad that is supposed to make accessibility better, but one thing, there’s no braille on the keypad.”
If Bonds wanted to make his way out of the difficult situation, he was going to have to get creative.
“And so the first thing you do as a blind person with no braille instructions, et cetera, is you have to try and figure out: Is this keypad a phone keypad or is it a calculator keypad?” He said. “And if so, how do I press enter to invoke or activate the floor that I’d like to go to? So I’m in here trying to go downstairs as an independent consumer to get food and can’t because I can’t figure it out.”
To make matters worse, Bonds said the key to his room was not working. Once he finally made his way out of the elevator with help from a nearby janitor, after realizing his key was not functioning, he had a new challenge to face.
“And then, The money thing in this elevator, the lobby is on the 20th floor, not the first floor,” he said. “So when I accidentally somehow pushed the button and get myself to go to the first floor, I’m still in a bad situation because that’s not the lobby and I need to go get my food that I got. That particular night, I go back upstairs, I go to my room and what happens? The key doesn’t work. At this point, a janitor helped me go back upstairs, eventually, but the key doesn’t work. Normally you could say, ‘Oh, I’ll get on the elevator and go back to the lobby to get another key.’ I didn’t want to go through a horror story again of being stuck on this elevator.”
While the elevator’s lack of accessibility options for the visually impaired created its own challenges, Bonds said he has issues with the hotel’s staff as well.
“The Hilton staff here were extremely insensitive,” he said. “We were told by the front desk ‘we didn’t build the hotel, and we feel attacked.’ I’m a very gracious person, you know, from all the things that I do, I’m not combative whatsoever. But they were extremely insensitive. Now the general manager, Amanda, was great when I ended up speaking to her. But the first level staff that does the desk, they were extremely insensitive. And first they tried to argue with me, ‘Oh, well the elevator has the wheelchair emblem on it for people that are disabled.’
“I repeated to them, I don’t have an ambulatory disability. I’m blind.”
In the end, Bonds said he hopes that Hilton will hear about his struggles at Atlanta’s Hampton Inn Suites on Peachtree. He wants improvements made.
“So my absolute hope is that Hilton gets some sensitivity training,” he said. “And at least from an ‘88 perspective, the Americans with Disabilities Act, this elevator is absolutely atrocious. I appreciate that all of the staff have finally came and looked at it. But they’ve got to do something about this.”
Introduced in 1988, the Americans with Disabilities Act provides that “no person shall be subjected to discrimination on the basis of handicap” in employment practices, transportation services, broadcasts and public accommodations.
UPDATE: Following Bonds’ story, Hampton Inn Suites has come forward with a statement.
“The hotel is aware of these reported concerns,” a spokesperson told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “Providing a hospitable, welcoming environment is the essence of our business, and it is our policy to comply with all ADA regulations. We immediately took the necessary steps to investigate further, including a consultation with our elevator company regarding potential updates to our equipment. We are also conducting additional training to provide a more seamless guest experience for individuals in need of accessibility accommodations.”
When reached for comment, a Hilton representative declined to offer a statement on the incident, but did note that the Hampton Inn Suites is independently owned and operated.
“Hilton has a capital light business model and does not directly own hotels,” the Hilton representative told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “Hilton has an owner community that owns hotels. This property is an independently owned and operated hotel.”
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