A British family enjoying a half-term holiday at one of the most exclusive hotels in Playa Paraiaso, in the south of Tenerife, had £8,000 worth of items stolen from their room, and hotel staff laughed in their face when they tried to speak to them about the crime.
Technology pioneer James Dobson and wife Jayne booked the best suite, at more than £1,300 a night, in the Spanish island’s five-star Hard Rock Hotel with their two children, aged seven and four, but three days into their much-needed break, ten items worth £8,000 were taken from the room while the family spent two hours at the hotel pool.
Mr Dobson, who lives in Leeds, West Yorkshire, said: “When we returned to the room, although there was no physical evidence of a break-in, we noticed straight away that things were missing”.
James and Jayne Dobson all smiles in Tenerife before the robbery occurred.
The thieves had taken two designer handbags, three pairs of designer sunglasses, the children’s Nintendo Switch games console and Bose Bluetooth headphones. Perhaps most concerningly, they had also managed to get into the room’s locked safe and steal 800 Euros from Mr Dobson’s wallet. They even took his electric toothbrush.
Mr Dobson said: “These were obviously not opportunists. They knew exactly what to take. They left items like airpods and iPads because they knew they could be tracked. They also took an Adidas rucksack, which I assume they used to carry the stolen items.
“It looks like the thieves cut the power using the fuse box in the room in order to reset and open the safe. We had a child’s clock with us that flashes the time when it loses mains power, and it was showing the time when we were out of the room.”
But the shock of the theft was just the start of the family’s nightmare experience. The reaction of hotel staff made it even worse.
By chance, Mr Dobson had come back to the room to collect something during the two-hour period and found three cleaners in the room: “I’m not pointing any fingers but these three people were in the room during the short timeframe the theft occurred. I could have identified them. As the door wasn’t forced, the hotel also has door readers to track who has been in and out of rooms and there was a CCTV camera just outside the room – I can’t believe it didn’t capture such large items being carried out.”
However, staff at the hotel were unhelpful and uncompassionate. Far from being sympathetic, Mr Dobson said they seemed unsurprised, as if similar thefts were a regular occurrence and offered no help in tracking down the thieves. The hotel manager was unavailable for several days and the staff’s first reaction was to say they couldn’t get involved until Mr Dobson reported the theft to the police, which he did as quickly as possible.
He added: “Surely there was someone on the staff other than the hotel manager who could have helped us? I went to the police station as soon as possible and submitted a full report. When I got back to the hotel, staff then used the fact that I had reported the theft as a way of washing their hands of it – saying that they couldn’t talk about it as it was now a police matter! It was beyond frustrating.
“Not once did anyone at the hotel apologise or show any empathy. Our holiday was ruined. My young children were so traumatised by the theft that they spent the rest of the holiday worried that someone would come back into the room. So much so that my wife had to sleep with them.”
But it was when Mr Dobson finally managed to speak face to face to the hotel manager, three days after the theft, that the hotel’s customer service reached an all-time low: “I was chasing the hotel every day to try to find out if they’d done or found anything. I eventually managed to talk to the hotel manager after literally refusing to leave reception until she came to speak to me. When I suggested that a crime had taken place, she laughed in me and my wife’s face.”
Mr Dobson is the co-founder of one of the fastest-growing tech companies in the UK.
He added: “I help to run a company which is laser focussed on customer service and I know a lot about it. Real customer service comes to the fore when something goes wrong. For a hotel whose marketing literature is all about family-friendly safety, its response has been nothing short of abysmal. They neither apologised nor reassured us in any way when my family’s space was violated by this crime. Nor have they tried to compensate us for an expensive holiday ruined by their lax security and failure to act on our behalf.
“Meanwhile, the police investigation seems to be drawing a blank.
“All I can do is try to make sure that other holidaymakers don’t fall for their false marketing. I would warn anyone thinking of booking this hotel to think again and check the review sites as unfortunately I am not the only person this has happened to - there are multiple reports of money being taken from people’s rooms. In our experience, the hotel is neither safe nor secure. And when something goes wrong, they will ignore you and hope you go away. After multiple attempts to contact various staff connected to the hotel, I am still waiting for a response from all of them.”
The Hard Rock Hotel in Tenerife is run by the Spanish Palladium Hotel Group, which has 40 hotels across the world. Despite numerous attempts, it has refused to respond to Mr Dobson’s complaint or offer a comment on the crime.
