The Royal Sonesta New Orleans

Great quick trip for a wedding!

Perfect location. Room was comfortable. Staff were excellent. Parking was easy. Will stay here again.

Never will be staying at any Sonesta hotel ever! After traveling 7 hours to enjoy Essence Fest, I get to Royal Sonesta where I'm greeted by a friendly bell hop. He assists me and my friend to the front desk. The front desk assigns my room number and as I turn around the bell hop asks "where to ladies?" I say out loud room 4122. The bell hop heads to the right towards the elevator we just got off (that leads to valet). As I walk towards the elevator, we pass a woman sitting in the lobby and I hear her say my room number out loud to the male sitting next to her. The bell hop then decides to take the other elevators on the opposite side. As my friend follows the bell hop to the elevator, I'm still in shock, stopped in my tracks at what I just heard. A complete stranger has told my room number to a male next to her. My friend gets my attention and I follow her to the elevator. I'm stunned. My friend asks what's wrong and I say "that lady said our room number to that guy." We immediately feel uncomfortable and tell the bell hop we'll grab our own bags from here. Before getting to the room we decide to go back downstairs to change the room number and floor. As I'm changing the room, my friend confronts the two strangers in the lobby. The woman tells her she repeated our room number because she's staying next to us. Her words were "I said, I guess we're staying next to room 4122." My friend let her know that was very strange and weird. Never in my life has a stranger repeated my room number. We head back upstairs to our reassigned room only to be placed by a room with no door and plastic tapped to the doorway (pic attached). My friend and I intuition is telling us to go! We walk out, past the bell hop, he doesn't say a word. Very strange considering he was just o so friendly. The strangers in the lobby are now nowhere to be found. We don't feel comfortable going to the front desk because we're unsure if the hotel is working with traffickers. My friend and I have no choice but to lose money and rebook a hotel at the last minute double the price considering the holiday and Essence Fest! I immediately call Royal Sonesta front desk and let them know everything that has happened. They claim they can't check us out and I will need to call the next day to speak to Amika. The next day I speak with Amika. I explain to her that I would like a refund for safety reasons. She informs me to call the 3rd party who I booked with and they will reach out to the hotel. She said good luck with getting a refund because the stay was non refundable and booked with 3rd party. I asked was it the hotel's decision or 3rd party decision for refund, she confirmed the hotel. I let her know exactly why I'm requesting the refund and went into detail regarding the suspicion of trafficking. She said she would play the cameras back and give me a call back on the 7th. I call on the 7th and speak with her and she said corporate has not yet gotten back to her and she will call me tomor