LEWISTON, Maine — Around 100 guests filled the Ramada Inn’s venue space for a wedding ceremony and reception in Lewiston this past weekend.
At the end of the night and the following morning, guests found out the hotel has been housing people in voluntary COVID-19 quarantine.
“None of us knew. None of us knew there were people in the building that were exposed to COVID,” Sue Cunningham, an Illinois resident and aunt of the bride, said Thursday.
The mother of the bride, also named Susan Cunningham, found out on her way back home to New Hampshire.
“My concern was we weren’t notified ahead of time,” she said. “We should have been notified that way my guests could have made an informative decision if they wanted to stay there or not, and I could have decided if I wanted to have the wedding there or not.”
The Ramada Inn has been working with the Maine Housing Authority and other organizations to give low-income, homeless, or other folks a place to safely quarantine in an effort to avoid spreading COVID-19.
Management officials with the hotel declined to do an on-camera interview but said there is no policy in place that requires staff to inform guests about the quarantine.
Wedding guests said they saw people leave the restricted area in the quarantine section of the hotel and go outside to smoke cigarettes.
An official with the Ramada Inn said staff reviewed all the security tapes at the area designed for quarantines and found no one besides cleaning staff left that section of the hotel.
Susan Cunningham repeated that her concern was she was not informed of hotel housing people in quarantine.
“We don’t live in Maine. I don’t know why they thought that we should know this,” she said. “My poor daughter is devastated, this ruined her weekend she’s completely devastated.”
The Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed to NEWS CENTER Maine there is no COVID-19 outbreak investigation associated with the Ramada Inn in Lewiston.