Guests at Westgate Las Vegas complain about water outage

By Pashtana Usufzy

Wednesday, Dec. 30, 2015 | 11:49 a.m.

A water main break Tuesday outside the Westgate Las Vegas left resort guests without water for about 12 hours and temporarily closed several restaurants, according to a company representative.

Officials at the hotel, which has about 3,000 rooms and was nearly at capacity Tuesday, originally were led to believe repairs would be a “one- to two-hour ordeal,” Westgate Resorts Chief Operating Officer Mark Waltrip said.

But the issue, which was beyond the control of the hotel, took longer than expected to resolve, he said.

Some restaurants remained open, and there was limited water service to convention services areas at the property, Waltrip said.

Guests took to social media as they waited for the water to return Tuesday night and early today, complaining to the company directly and leaving comments on customer review site Yelp.

“We’re working with each guest on an individual basis,” Waltrip said this morning.

Eunji Tuttle, a Florida tourist, said she was ready to brush her teeth about 1 p.m. Tuesday when she noticed there was no water in her room.

“I can’t take showers, can’t flush the toilet, can’t wash my face, can’t brush my teeth,” she said Tuesday night. “It is very frustrating.”

Tuttle, who had been staying at the hotel since Dec. 19, said the restaurants she wanted to visit were closed.

Las Vegas Valley Water District spokesman Damon Hodge described the issue as a Westgate-specific problem early today, saying the issue was with the property’s infrastructure and not a “Water District issue.”

Tuttle said the water returned about 12 hours after she noticed it was out.

“The water is back. Finally,” she said just before 1:30 a.m. today, adding that she could finally flush the toilet.

Allene Smith, a registered nurse from Chandler, Ariz., said she and her husband, who have been at the hotel since Christmas Day, were hosting out-of-town guests who were taking a separate vacation.

The group decided to visit the buffet, which closed Tuesday afternoon, and afterward, they tried to use the bathrooms in the lobby, she said. The bathrooms were closed, Smith said.

When they went to Smith’s room to use the bathroom, they got an unwelcome surprise — the water wouldn’t turn on.

Smith said the hotel passed out bottles of water to guests, but they didn’t issue a hotel-wide notice about the issue.

“Nobody could say anything,” Smith said of the hotel staff. “They said at 1 p.m. they wouldn’t know anything until about 6.”