Dakota
Dec 17, 07, 12:20 pm
The hotel itself was OK: good, clean rooms; decent rate; apparently very friendly and helpful staff - but that's the killer here. The staff and management are dishonest and conspire to thieve from guests, so beware.
On check out, we wanted to spend some time looking around Ubud before driving on and the staff suggested we leave our things with them for safe keeping in the office. Made sense that that should have been safer than leaving everything parked in our Jeep, which are very easy to get into, so we did. I might add that they had been utterly charming up to this point.
We returned a few hours later and had decided to stay another night and were told by another member of staff on the desk that that would be no problem because the hotel was quiet. We collected our things and went back to the same villa we had had the night before. 2 minutes later one of the original staff who had taken our bags earlier came round looking flustered and saying that his colleague had made a mistake: the hotel was actually fully booked and we could not stay after all. He apologised profusely but was keen we should leave ASAP. We thought it odd, but moved on.
On arrival at our next stop later that night - you've guessed it - we realised that our bags had been carefully gone through and cash and credit cards hidden and buried deep within stolen, and in such a way that it would not have been immediately noticeable. Our luggage had not left our sight other than when it was apparently being kept "safe" in the Puri Asri office. No problems while we were there and this seems to have been a well-practised routine by the manager and desk staff to get our trust before stealing from us, which makes it all the more disgusting.
My contact with the hotel since confirms my suspicion that this a systematic thing at Puri Asri and not just casual, opportunistic theft. I've never come across anything like it before and would just like to save it happening to someone else.
On check out, we wanted to spend some time looking around Ubud before driving on and the staff suggested we leave our things with them for safe keeping in the office. Made sense that that should have been safer than leaving everything parked in our Jeep, which are very easy to get into, so we did. I might add that they had been utterly charming up to this point.
We returned a few hours later and had decided to stay another night and were told by another member of staff on the desk that that would be no problem because the hotel was quiet. We collected our things and went back to the same villa we had had the night before. 2 minutes later one of the original staff who had taken our bags earlier came round looking flustered and saying that his colleague had made a mistake: the hotel was actually fully booked and we could not stay after all. He apologised profusely but was keen we should leave ASAP. We thought it odd, but moved on.
On arrival at our next stop later that night - you've guessed it - we realised that our bags had been carefully gone through and cash and credit cards hidden and buried deep within stolen, and in such a way that it would not have been immediately noticeable. Our luggage had not left our sight other than when it was apparently being kept "safe" in the Puri Asri office. No problems while we were there and this seems to have been a well-practised routine by the manager and desk staff to get our trust before stealing from us, which makes it all the more disgusting.
My contact with the hotel since confirms my suspicion that this a systematic thing at Puri Asri and not just casual, opportunistic theft. I've never come across anything like it before and would just like to save it happening to someone else.