Kagehitokiri

cruisr, uberx would not exist if people were that security conscious

the human element of any security (if there is security in first place) can be exploited

RTW1

Of course it was not... For stealing a purse and having a few free drinks :-).

His mom got picked up, either as part of a con or something else. Not bothering with the police makes me, skeptical me that is, suspicious if it's the whole story.

Letting a stranger into your room... Really...

kokonutz

Hotel staff are not cops. It's not like an upgrade was denied. A CRIME was committed. He should have called the cops straight away, even before approaching hotel staff.

If nothing else a police report may be required to expedite the issuance of new ICE documentation.

Hopefully either I missed or he did not mention his interactions with the police.

Kagehitokiri

he also only looked for purse the next morning. but he did not give anything even approaching a timeline, nor focus on what facts were as they became established.

RTW1, you missed the follow up post where the guy had used ben's name and room number to bill things to his room.

ben's posts were not focused on establishing if/what/when crimes took place.

RTW1

No I didn't.... room info anyone can learn with a bit of skill. Most paces have no verification in place at all for bar charges because it's not worth the effort. And who is to say it wasn't dropped by his mother.

Do you really think criminals are interested in a free drink at the bar or are reading a blog and then will wait for someone to show up eventually and then steal a few hundred dollars?

It's a standard con or a romantic encounter gone wrong. Happens every day.

Kagehitokiri

thats been my point re "security"

ah, i see you were referring to motive, rather than means/opportunity.

kokonutz

Whew. So it appears that law enforcement was eventually contacted.

So really the point of the posts it just about what lucky thinks a hotel staff should/should not do in such a situation, rather than what a TRAVELER should do/not do in that situation.

And, from that perspective I'd say the hotel staff behaved mostly appropriately. Lucky seems to have wanted them to mount a CSI-style investigation. But, again, that's not what hotels do. And to the extent that they work with the police on this case they are certainly not going to share that fact or any information gleaned from that work with him.

Perhaps they could have been more sympathetic to him? Seems like it. But most of the latest post is criticizing their security response rather than their customer service response.

The sad fact is that $h!# happens. Travel, even in the bubble of First Class and at Chain Hotels is not without travail.

Lashing out at the hotel is not going to change that. Hotels are not the police. Learning from the incident and altering behavior will.

RTW1

Yeah, I've lost interest too.... Didn't seem such a big deal afterall when you are posting the normal stuff again after half a day.

Now it seems to be just draging readers in by posting about it in pieces.
And if you let someone into your room, there's not much a hotel should do.

Astrophsx

I see this going from a multi-post story about his mom getting robbed to a multi-post tutorial on not how to get robbed and what hotels should be expected to do. I love reading the comments... "Well I'm never going to stay a the W Barcelona now!"

kokonutz

Lucky's mom (and lucky) made so many mistakes over the course of that night and day that it could be a case study in how not to travel.

From today's update:
If his only concern was figuring out how the security breach happened so it didn't happen again then his first call should have been to the police, not something he did as an afterthought at the airport on his way out of the country.

Thing is, even then he would not know that. To the extent that the cops and or hotel do look into the matter there is no way in hell they would ever share their findings with him for both legal and liability reasons.

Of course, with SPG corporate now involved I'm sure there will be some nice 'compensation' and bennies coming his way. So...

cruisr

Ding ding ding. We have a winner.

tom911

Well, one thing we don't know is what kind of resources local police in Barcelona devote to interfacing with hotels in terms of crime. If there is a crime ring working hotels and going property to property in search of the big catch, local police may be aware of it while the hotel staff at one specific hotel may not be. The only way they're going to connect the dots is with a police report. I'm glad he got around to doing that, but it did look from reading the blog that he did expect a significant investigation from the hotel. For all we know they have interviewed all the employees on duty and didn't draw any conclusions, but how much effort should they invest in something like this? How much video should they watch from how many vantage points? What would the staff time for something like this cost and what if it didn't reveal anything in the end that implicated any staff members? Who pays for the costs then?

benzemalyonnais

Now Lucky is saying that we should all let United cancel the tickets from the DKK affair yesterday.

Does anyone actually think that if he wasn't banned from United, he wouldn't have bought 50 of these for himself?

'I didn’t bother posting about it at the time because I figured it was a given that this fare wouldn’t be honored (and I was also away from my computer when it was first announced).'

I don't think any of his readers know the real reason why he has never every reviewed a United product. He did post a story about his Mom's experiences right during the time the fare was live.

pillow25

Winner winner chicken dinner. Some of the comments (and Lucky's thoughts) are ludicrous.

On the other hand, I wish we would stop talking about this so that he doesn't get the clicks and associated revenue and would stop writing about it. But I think that's a pipe dream.

Also, why were they in Barcelona for only one night? It's too big and cool of a city to spend one night in...

RTW1

Hint: he might travel a lot, but he doesn't see much.....he probably went for piza or burgers in BCN.