D.N.C. Hotel Room Assignments Come Under Fire

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by Kirk Hawkins
Bio | Email | Follow: @kirkhawkins

Story Created: Sep 5, 2012 at 8:58 PM EDT

Story Updated: Sep 5, 2012 at 10:51 PM EDT

CHARLOTTE, N.C.--Charlotte is taking a beating in the mainstream media. Reporters for popular blogs and columns are writing about their nightmares in Queen City hotel rooms. New reports describe bed bugs, drugs, and prostitutes as some of the problems they are dealing with.

As a talk show host on Sirius X.M. Radio, David Webb is known for his opinions. But, before he moved to a new hotel he was dealing with some disturbing facts. "This place is a little dicey and there's a pimp and a prostitute," he said.

Webb was supposed to be staying at the Knights Inn. Other members of the media were also assigned here and they had horror stories. The National Review Online's John Fund relayed an observation of one of his colleagues, "Two guys were dealing drugs in the room next to me and a prostitute was working out of the parking lot  and this was in the early afternoon."

The fifteen thousand hotel rooms for the D.N.C. are spread across 150 hotels. Charlotte tourism officials say the Convention Committee handled all hotel assignments. "It comes down to vetting, it comes down to organizing, frankly a good event. That says something about how they do things," Webb said.

And that could impact the way the world views Charlotte. Gawker's John Cook wrote a piece about his "awful hotel room" including this assessment, "Charlotte is the armpit of the south, a glorified
half-dead exurb with some tall buildings planted in the middle." "It's unfair to the residents and the people who live here and really a beautiful city to have that taint a large event," Webb said.

Charlotte Regional Visitor Authority C.E.O. Tom Murray said, "With so much coverage on Charlotte dominating the airwaves during the DNC, we can’t just focus on one article that doesn’t get its facts completely straight."

The D.N.C. Host Committee didn't return our requests for comment.

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