More than 150 guests at the Radisson Paraiso Hotel in Mexico City were locked out of the hotel for two nights last week — some without essential medications — by striking union employees.

Strikers cleared the 237-room hotel of guests on Monday afternoon by running through the halls, knocking on doors and shouting, "Fire!," Victor Joubran, owner of Quality Travel Services in McLean, Va., reported last week from Mexico City.

During the two-day lockout, the guests were not permitted to re-enter the hotel even to get essential possessions, such as prescription medicines, passports, money, clothing, cell phones and other valuables, from their rooms.

The guests were finally permitted to collect their belongings on Wednesday morning but had to vacate the hotel again immediately.

Joubran, who was staying at the hotel after attending a family wedding in the Mexican capital, said that once the guests had cleared out, the union sealed off the hotel. Guests returning after the doors were shut were not permitted to cross picket lines to gather their personal belongings.

Joubran said guests saw no indication of tourism officials, law enforcement authorities or hotel management taking any action to intervene on their behalf.

"We kept calling the embassy on Monday night," Joubran said. "Finally, two people showed up, took our names and left. Hotel management, the tourism board and the government seemed reluctant to put demands on the union to end the strike."

What concerned him most, he said, was that "there were diabetics, elderly people, people suffering from altitude sickness and lots of us requiring daily meds for blood pressure and other disorders."

About 50 of the hotel’s guests had flown to Mexico City for the same wedding Joubran attended. Those guests, he said, were on an all-day bus excursion Monday when the lockout took place. When they returned to the Radisson about 7:30 p.m., they found that the doors were locked, he said.

"People were milling around," Joubran said. "Everyone was confused. Finally, vans came around 10:30 that night and brought all 150 of us to the Royal Pedregal Hotel nearby. I finally convinced the manager there to give us dinner. We got a meal, a toothbrush and a room."

The Paraiso is independently owned and operated under a license agreement with Radisson. Its owner also owns the 317-room Royal Pedregal, Joubran said.

Eduardo Chaillo, North American director for the Mexico Tourist Board, said that according to a copy of a police report and other "information I received by telephone" from Felipe Carreon, service director of the Mexico City Tourism Secretariat, "employees at the Radisson Hotel [Paraiso] in Mexico City called a sudden strike about 5 p.m. on Monday, March 1, and asked hotel guests to leave, not allowing many of them the time they needed to pack up their belongings and not allowing guests who arrived later to go up to their rooms."

According to Chaillo, "Carreon told me he immediately went to the hotel to negotiate with the striking employees, supplying medical personnel to affected guests in the meantime so that those who may have left medicines in the hotel could be properly attended to."

However, Joubran said that the guests were not given medical attention until Tuesday afternoon, and many did not get replacement meds until more than a day after the lockout began.

He said that Jose Riestra, the general manager of the Radisson, never made an appearance, nor did Radisson representatives return his phone calls to its corporate headquarters.

Other than depriving guests of their money, meds and passports, Joubran said, "the union members were very nice to us. We were never mishandled, and there was no violence. I suspect we were just pawns being used by the union to get the attention of the owner, who never showed up, only his intermediaries."

The union reportedly had filed a list of grievances with the government related to issues with the hotel owner but had not received a response, Joubran said.

"We were used as hostages to push the owner to deal with the union," he said.

Joubran said that two doctors finally showed up on Tuesday afternoon at the Royal Pedregal to take blood pressure readings and write prescriptions.

Joubran was among the guests in need of medications. "This was serious," he said. "My blood pressure was 197/140 due to the stress and being without my medications. I wasn’t alone in this."

Even after receiving their temporary prescriptions, Joubran said that he and two other guests had to spend four hours in three pharmacies in Mexico City trying to get the prescriptions filled.

"This was so convoluted," he said. "The medications have different names and dosages down here, so it was difficult and time-consuming."

The exiled guests got a phone call at 5:50 a.m. Wednesday from the Pedregal’s front desk, telling them the union had granted them a two-hour window from 6 a.m. to 8 a.m. to get their belongings from their rooms at the Radisson.

"We hustled on buses once again, got to the Radisson," he said. "Union officials let us go into the lobby in groups of 10 and then into the elevators two at a time. We got our stuff, got back on the buses and returned to the Pedregal."

Many of the guests had planned to depart Tuesday but could not because their passports and belongings were held hostage at the Radisson.

With no passports, Joubran and his wife had to cancel their early morning flight on Wednesday and reschedule for Thursday. He said American Airlines "bent over backwards in waiving change fees and accommodating delayed passengers." However, he said, "Delta was somewhat reluctant to do the same."

The Radisson reopened on Thursday.

Carlson Hotels, parent company of Radisson, issued a statement Thursday stating that "the union-related situation at the Radisson Paraiso Mexico City has been resolved. The hotel has resumed operations after working with its legal counsel to resolve the matter with the union. The hotel operator relocated all of the guests to their other properties in the area and secured resources to provide assistance, but we regret that guests were inconvenienced."

Overall, Chaillo said, local tourism ministry officials in Mexico City "did a very good job of taking care [of the hotel guests]. Everything was back in place very soon."

Even so, Carreon on Thursday was "checking if there are any reports of injuries among affected guests," Chaillo said, "and we are awaiting information from the hotel regarding the compensation it offered and will offer to them."

He quoted Carreon as saying "that to his knowledge, this is the first incident of its kind that has occurred in Mexico City in the 10 years he has worked at the Mexico City Tourism Secretariat."