ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – A hotel owner in the metro says he’s struggling to get customers because of all the unwanted guests he deals with every day. 

Along with those guests comes crime, drug use, and other illegal activities. 

Vimal Patel, co-owner of the Rodeway Inn & Suites, says the things he sees at his property are exactly why he decided years ago not to own any more hotels in Albuquerque. 

KOB 4 first told you about the issues that neighbors were seeing at the hotels around Coors and Iliff. But this hotel owner says he’s seeing it too and says he’s actively working to fix it. 

Vimal Patel says a group of hotels attracts a lot of unwanted clienteles and criminal activity. 

Since he took over the hotel a few months ago, he’s witnessed open drug use and drug deals. He found rooms that were destroyed or filled with stolen items like TV’s, cell phones and computers. 

Patel says on any given day, there’s homeless people staying on his property that he has to constantly kick out. 

He says the property fell to him and his business partners after the previous owner filed for bankruptcy. Initially, he did not know how bad things were, but he quickly found out. 

“When we took it over in kind of a distressed situation. So there are a lot of undesirable people living here and working here as well. It was a pretty full hotel, but the previous owner was charging about $30 below market of what an economy hotel would charge here in Albuquerque, and that’s how he was able to keep the hotel full. But we did take it over, we found that about 30% of the inventory was out of order, multiple issues in the rooms, stolen stuff,” said Patel. 

Patel says he knows it’s easy to point the finger at hotel owners who seemingly let these things happen. But he says that’s not the case for his property. 

Since taking over, they raised prices to market rate to try and deter some of those unwelcome guests. He says they also replaced pretty much all the staff too and have started to upgrade dining rooms and the facilities. 

A big issue he still faces is a lot of unwanted guests paid upfront for extended stays, and there’s no way to kick them out early. 

Patel says things can not continue this way because he sees how badly it’s effecting the area. 

“Many of the people on this corridor in this neighborhood loan hotels and businesses. They’re struggling, not only mentally but financially as well. And we, you know, we do not want this. We do not, you know, I don’t think any hotel owner wants to have the type of people inhabiting the hotel, inhabiting the area, because it’s unsafe for them too,” said Patel.  

We reached out to APD about these concerns. A spokesperson says officers do patrols to monitor activity in the area, and there are operations conducted in the area to help deter criminal activity.