A cleaner at a four-star hotel in Benidorm was caught on camera stealing valuables and hiding them in her inner wear while cleaning a family’s room.
Alastair and Sue Conner had paid about £5,500 for the all-inclusive package holiday, staying at the Magic Natura Resort in Benidorm with their 15-year-old son Jack in September.
After packets of cigarettes and perfumes disappeared from their hotel room, the British family from Stockton, Durham, installed secret cameras in their room to solve the mystery.
It was gathered that the couple took photos of their belongings, and hid a laptop on the dressing table, to record before heading out for the day.
The parents-of-three could not believe their eyes when the footage captured their cleaner searching through their belongings. She took their perfume and cigarettes while cleaning their room the following day.
The couple said around €750 worth of items were taken from their hotel room – including €385 worth of cash, €100 worth of perfume and 260 cigarettes.
Sue, a 53-year-old finance director, said: ‘I noticed when we’d come back to the room stuff was missing, my bags had moved and I thought someone’s been in my knicker drawer.
‘So we decided to set some cameras up but the batteries weren’t lasting. We thought something was definitely going on.
‘We ended up taking photographs when we went out to show what the room was like and when we came back we noticed my bags had been moved. This was going on from practically day one. Things weren’t in their place.
‘I’d just bought a new bottle of Gucci perfume from the airport and that was gone.
‘We bought 400 fags on the plane and all the fags had gone within a week. I thought something wasn’t right.
‘And our son Jack said his clothes had been moved in the wardrobe. He had a necklace with a gold pendant with a ring on it and that was gone. Money, cigarettes, perfume – it was all gone.’
‘It wasn’t until coming on until the end of the holiday that I thought I’d set my laptop up,‘ Alastair, 47, continued.
‘The first day we didn’t get anything because it was a different cleaner then two days before we were due to leave, we went out to lunch, came back and I checked my laptop and we’d caught her.
‘We never expected a staff member to rob us. I went from excitement to disbelief.
‘I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I was disgusted.’
Sue added: ‘I was mortified. She’s gone through our private drawers. We felt violated.’
Alastair said: ‘We’ve just spent £5,500 on a holiday that we didn’t even enjoy.’
