A British family has complained to British media that they saw one maid rummaging through her belongings and another drinking soft drink from the bottle before putting it back in its place in a five-star hotel room in Crete, where they were on holiday.
According to a report in the British Mirror, Tommy Hudson, from Durham, paid almost £5,000 for a holiday via Jet2 at the luxurious Elios Hill, on the peninsula of Crete, in early August for himself, his wife Joanne and their two-year-old daughter Elsie.
But the incidents recorded by the camera, which was placed in the hotel room, made the British family feel unsafe on their holiday and ruined their supposedly relaxing moments.
Mr Hudson, 42, describing the family’s disastrous holiday to the British newspaper, said he and his wife talked about it every day and watched the cameras to see if anything else had happened.
Describing the shocking incidents, he said: “One video captured a male cleaner rummaging through a WHSmith bag left in the room and going through our belongings that were on the shelves. In another shot, a female cleaner was recorded taking a swig from a Sprite bottle before putting it back in place. She is then seen taking a key card to the room.”
Jet2 said the hotel apologised to Mr Hudson, saying it would offer a “similar gesture of goodwill”. However, according to Mr Hudson, the £320 cash compensation will not recover the damage caused. Indeed, he is now warning that he will appeal to the Association of British Tour Operators (ABTA), of which the Jet2 group is a member.
“They returned 320 pounds to us. They don’t seem to have taken it seriously at all,” he said. He added: “On the penultimate day, he drank from our bottle and took our key card. We had to go and change the keys in case he tried to get back into the room. The camera wasn’t even hidden, it was placed in the corner of the room. We spoke to the hotel manager and he told us that the staff had been relieved of their duties. But we felt unsafe in the room, which we had to check from the camera every day.”
Mr Hudson claimed he brought his camera in after reading a review from another customer who reported that items had gone missing from his room.
The family was offered a night at a beach club, with transportation, food and drink expenses paid, and late checkout on the last day.
“We don’t know if he had spit in the bottle. It makes my stomach turn to think that my daughter could have been drinking… We were told that because it was our last day at the resort they couldn’t really do anything for us.”
He said he can’t trust Jet2 again for his family’s holiday, questioning the slogan on the side of its planes “package holidays you can trust”.
