HOUSTON — Before hoteliers decide it's time to ask a guest to leave, attorney Rob Schnitz wants them to pause and really think about it.

Is it necessary? What’s the real reason behind asking someone to leave?

Speaking during the Hospitality Law Conference, Schnitz, partner at Kabat Chapman & Ozmer and former associate general counsel at Hyatt Hotels Corp., said hotel teams must balance the hotel as a welcoming, hospitable space while also preventing disturbances and potential threats to guests and operations.

To illustrate his point, he shared a viral video from 2018 that recorded two Black men escorted by police officers out of a Starbucks. It’s a relatively calm scene, with people asking what the men had done wrong, to which the woman responded they hadn’t done anything.

Schnitz shared the backstory to the video: The two men were sitting at a table in a Philadelphia Starbucks. An employee asked the men if they were going to buy something. They said they were waiting for a third person to join them.

They were told that if they weren’t going to buy anything, they would be asked to leave. They said they would order once the other person arrived for their business meeting. The employee walked away, and then minutes later police arrived and escorted them out in handcuffs, which is the part of the situation the video captures. They were initially arrested on suspicion of trespassing, but the local prosecutor declined to charge them.

“That's what the public saw, and that's what really led to this becoming an international incident,” Schnitz said.

A day or two after millions of people viewed the video online, then-Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson issued a public apology to the two men. Within weeks, the company closed 8,000 of its locations to conduct unconscious bias training. Starbucks and the two men agreed to a settlement for an undisclosed sum.

The different factors at play here are quite complicated, particularly as the incident took place in a hospitality establishment that invites people in, Schnitz said.

The law of trespass means a private property owner can ask, and even force, someone to leave the property, he said. There are differences in how the property owner can protect their property depending on whether it’s a residence or commercial property, however.

In hospitality, the property owners are inviting people onto the property, he said.

“You put out the private property sign on your hotel, you’re not going to do very good business,” he said.

There are limitations allowed in that invitation, he said. The property owner can place conditions on the invitation and ability for people to stay on property, he said, citing the “No Shirts, No Shoes, No Service” policies many businesses display in signs. Another condition is that people entering a business that provides goods and services must buy those goods and services to stay.

Someone who does not comply with these conditions can be asked to leave, and if they don’t, the owner or other employees can contact law enforcement, he said.

“Asking them to help you, to assist with the removal, is, again, not only common practice, but it’s been supported by the law,” he said.

Business owners can also cite other reasons for asking patrons or guests to leave, such as safety concerns or limited seating, he said. Even paying customers can be asked to leave if they’re engaging in disruptive conduct.

Schnitz cited the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin.

“It was the first piece of federal legislation prohibiting someone from discriminating against someone at a hotel or restaurant,” he said. “These are public accommodations, the legal definitions of what those are. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 zeroed in on hotels and lodging. They are specifically identified as the types of public accommodations that are subject to this law.”

That law put the motive of the business owner or operator in question when they were asking someone to leave the premises or denying services.

Ray Oldenburg was the sociologist who coined the term “third place,” focusing much of his work on the importance of public gathering places.

“The third place is a place other than work and other than your home where you can hang out and do what you want to do,” Schnitz said. “You could work. You can see your friends. You could sit there by yourself, listen to music, meditate — whatever you want to do.”

In the 1990s, Starbucks executives liked the concept and incorporated it into their business practices, he said. It changed the invitation, and with it, customers’ expectations.

“They’re essentially saying, ‘Come and stay at our premises and hang out if you want to,’” he said.

Part of the problem for Starbucks, however, was that even though the corporation adopted this policy, it still allowed individual Starbucks locations to decide whether to have a policy requiring customers to buy something in order to stay, he said. It had conflicting practices and policies. Since then, the company has changed course and now has signs displayed at all locations saying anyone entering their coffee shops will be treated as a guest regardless of whether they buy something.

In the hotel industry, hotels — in particular, hotel lobbies — have always functioned as somewhat of a third place, especially in larger cities, Schnitz said.

“Go to the hotel lobby of the Palmer House in downtown Chicago,” he said. “There’s lots of people that are just relaxing who have nothing to do with this hotel."

Hoteliers must understand the invitation they make as operators, Schnitz said. If the hotel has different types of services offered, hoteliers need to understand the invitations for these different spaces.

“Probably more importantly, what is the public’s perception of the invitation?” he asked. “I think that’s something that we all have to accept, this fundamental change even if you didn’t intend to have a third-place option.”

Even if a hotelier intends to maintain a place that requires the purchase of a good or service, it’s possible the public still perceives it as an open invitation to hang out there, he said. That doesn’t mean hoteliers can’t enforce their policy where appropriate, but they need to be mindful of the decisions they make.

“If you have installed electrical outlets for people to plug their devices and you have tables for people to put their devices on, you have comfortable couches and chairs for people to relax, you've changed the invitation,” he said. “There's just no way around that.”

Hotel staff, particularly the security staff if the hotel has them, must receive proper training on not just how to remove a guest but also how to identify a trespass situation, Schnitz said. They need to know what the circumstances are that would necessitate a trespass response and how to do it correctly.

“You need to advise [the guest] that you are asking them and why you’re asking them to leave the premises,” he said.

The training also needs to go over when it's appropriate to call the police for assistance, he said. It doesn’t have to be for every circumstance.

“I’m sure that Starbucks store regrets calling the police in that situation,” he said, referring back to his earlier story. “Was it really necessary? What objectives were they trying to achieve in that particular case? We don’t know for sure, but it doesn’t look like the store was all that crowded in that particular circumstance.”

Every business needs to understand how this act can be perceived as aggressive with the wrong motivations, Schnitz said.

“It’s important now to question whether bias is impacting the decisions that are being made,” he said. “It’s important that we all have frank discussions about asking those questions and incorporating that into our thought process.”

That process can include bringing someone else in when making these decisions to try to avoid inadvertently allowing bias to affect a decision, he said.

“We can’t really figure out how to deal with bias until you’ve understood how it happens, why it happens and that it’s sometimes unavoidable,” he said. “We all have our natural biases and tendencies, and we all need to learn in the service industry how to act on those and how to respond when something happens.” 

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