This is the shocking moment a Benidorm hotel receptionist allegedly sneaks into a British mother’s room before sniffing and stealing her underwear after she set up a secret camera to catch him.
Rara Armstrong, from Gloucester, took her 11-year-old son on a family holiday to Benidorm, Spain, where she said she was left ‘creeped out’ when the hotel employee asked for her number and to take her for a coffee.
The man then dropped off a bottle of prosecco in her room ‘to apologise’, which caused her to set up her son’s iPad to record the door while she and her son went to dinner in case he would enter her room again.
In a ‘surreal’ twist, the receptionist can be seen on video entering the room and appearing to rustle around in what Ms Armstrong claims is her dirty laundry bag.
Footage shows the man, wearing a smart shirt and trousers, pulling what appears to be a thong out of the bag and seemingly sniffing it, before stuffing the garment in his back pocket.
‘It made me feel horrible, I felt so violated. I was there with my son and this man was meant to be [a member of] staff,’ Ms Armstrong said.
She added about the ‘surreal’ moment captured during her holiday back in May: ‘It was crazy. I wasn’t expecting something like that.’
The mother-of-one said first encountered the man when she went to the hotel reception on her first day to ask about her room key not working.
She claims that this was when he asked to take her for a coffee, and when she rejected him, he asked for her number instead.
‘I felt a little bit creeped out by that and I was like, “I’ve just got here, this is the last thing I need”,’ she said.
‘But I didn’t make a complaint because I didn’t want to ruin the holiday from the minute we first got there.’
After firmly rejecting the man, Ms Armstrong discovered a few hours later that he’d subscribed to her OnlyFans account. She suspects he used the details from her hotel booking to look her up.
She said: ‘He was messaging me and saying “oh I can’t believe you’re in Spain”. At first I didn’t click that it was him.
‘I was like “oh have you seen me at the airport or somewhere?” and he said “yeah, you’re in the hotel where I work” and I thought “oh my god”. He was [looking me up] online.
‘I said “this is making me really uncomfortable and it’s really unprofessional, I’m here with my son and this isn’t acceptable” and he was like “oh I’m so sorry, please don’t tell anyone”. I said “I won’t but please leave me alone”.’
She claims that the staff member stated she was too ‘sexy’ for him to resist after she berated him for asking her out.
After coming back from dinner and discovering a bottle of prosecco in the room on their final night, Ms Armstrong decided to prop her son’s iPad up to film the doorway in case he entered again.
Ms Armstrong messaged him on OnlyFans to confirm it was him who dropped it off, and the man allegedly replied saying he was ‘sorry for upsetting you’.
After filming him entering her room and rummaging around, she said she was annoyed with herself for not reporting him when he was ‘inappropriate’ on the first day.
She said she took her son to the reception at an adjacent hotel and staff there arranged for her and her son to stay in a new room for the last night of their holiday, before returning to the UK on the next day.
LoveHolidays, which she booked the holiday with, apologised for her ordeal and claimed the hotel fired the man immediately the next morning after she reported it to staff.
However they are refusing any refund or compensation for her holiday as she did not report the incident to them or police before coming home.
Ms Armstrong claims she was unable to report the incident to police as the incident happened on her last day of the trip and she didn’t want to miss her flight.
Since arriving back in the UK, Ms Armstrong has been unable to make a police report in Spain and says the hotel won’t refund her stay or offer any compensation due to the lack of a police report.
Ms Armstrong also claims that her hotel is saying they told her to report the incident to the police, but she said they never did that and instead asked her to not show the video to anyone.
‘It’s been a real nightmare getting any sort of justice from it,’ she said.
She now hopes to warn other women to report ‘creeps’ immediately and potentially set up recording cameras if they suspect something is wrong.
Ms Armstrong said: ‘My advice to others would just be to be really vigilant. If someone is being creepy towards you, report them straight away. Maybe carry a door lock protection or something.
‘And maybe record your room, that seems to be a good thing to do so then you have evidence and the hotel can’t deny that it’s happened.’
The hotel declined to comment.
LoveHolidays explained that because Ms Armstrong did not report it to them while she was still on holiday, they did not have the opportunity to provide support or advise her on the process of reporting the issue to the police at the time.
They said that for this reason no compensation is being offered by LoveHolidays.
A LoveHolidays spokesperson said: ‘We are very sorry to hear of Ms Armstrong’s experience while on holiday.
‘Unfortunately we were not made aware of the incident while she was on holiday, so we were unable to provide her with support or advice on making a police report during her stay.
‘We have fully investigated the issue with the hotel and are confident the appropriate action has been taken to ensure this does not happen again.’