"Twenty years of professional travel. Every continent. Every type of accommodation imaginable. This is the only one-star review I have ever written, and I want to be very clear about why.
Someone entered my room and stole approximately €400 worth of personal belongings. When I reported it, the staff on duty told me there were no security cameras in the building. There are cameras in the entrance hall. There are cameras in the corridor to the dining area. They are signposted. So the staff were either lying to my face, or they had never bothered to learn the most basic facts about the property they are paid to manage. Either way, it tells you everything you need to know about this place.
They also denied that housekeeping had entered my room. My bath mat had been replaced. A new toilet roll had appeared. Someone had been in that room. Presented with this, they had nothing to say. Nothing. They refused to give me the manager's work email to formally report the theft. When I insisted, one of them told me I was bothering her. I was reporting a robbery. I was bothering her.
I was told the manager, Ms. Maryke Gottlieb, would be available at 8:30 the following morning. She wasn't there. I left my number and asked to be called back urgently. She never called. When I finally reached Ms. Gottlieb by phone that evening, she had not bothered to familiarise herself with any of the details of the case. She did not know that one of the stolen items had turned up in another guest's room that morning, a fact that should have triggered an immediate internal investigation and didn't, because nobody in this building apparently thought it worth mentioning to her. And then, after everything, she told me she found it difficult to believe a theft had occurred. Police report filed. Physical evidence provided. And the property manager's position was that I was probably wrong.
Ms. Gottlieb, I will be direct: you are a disgrace to this profession. Not because a theft happened on your watch, that alone would not have warranted this review. But because at every single step of this process, when you had the opportunity to do the right thing, you chose not to. You didn't show up. You didn't call back. You didn't brief yourself. You dismissed a robbery victim to his face. You are not managing a property, you are coasting through a job you are catastrophically unqualified for, and the people unfortunate enough to stay here are paying the price for it.
Do not stay here. And if you do, and something goes wrong, do not expect anyone in this building to help you."
