Eldorado Hotel and Spa

The hotel and location itself is actually really beautiful, comfortable and there’s lots of fun things to see and do but wow did my team and I experience some very interesting moments whilst staying there…

I’d like to start off with that my small team of 4 women (including myself) had travelled from Australia and we’re super excited to be in Santa Fe for the weekend. The interesting moments came when the 2 team members of my team who are coincidentally also the only 2 people of colour in the team were asked on multiple occasions “if they were guests there?” and “please prove you’re a guest here so what’s your name and room number” while they were doing some work on their laptops in the lobby/bar area.(it’s a huge and mostly empty room so there wasn’t a crowd of people waiting or wanting seats) The security guard who was asking these questions was provided proof fairly quickly by my 2 team members that they were indeed guests and yet, they were still kicked out and told to go back to their room because “it’s a hotel policy that you can’t be down here” despite just only sitting there with earphones in, doing their work while not disturbing anyone. When we brought this up with the hotel desk staff - they said there is no such policy and so it turns out the security will probably make up rules to escort you out if they don’t like the way you look? Because why else would staff tell their paying guests they can’t use their facilities? (especially if that particular space is open 24/7 & no it wasn’t being cleaned at that time either)

Also if you look anything other than white and just somewhat standout in someway, older white ladies who are also just guests will probably ask you the same thing as the security guard did (yes, that really happened)

I know this because myself and my other team member (who is also white) had not being questioned or even asked to provide anything to prove that we are guests the entire time we had been there. As well as going out of our way to just quickly ask other guests who were at the pool the same time as us (they were also white) if they had been questioned at all and turns out they hadn’t been approached once! interesting..