The Hotel Gervasoni in Valparaiso was a lovely place - the terrace has a lovely outlook. Its full of character. We had fairly small rooms that overlooked the street below with little Juliette balconies a nice feature. However, we were robbed - in our room within 10 minutes of arriving. Here's the story for anyone interested.
When we arrived, I went to put documents and money in the room safe. There wasn't one. When we had been there only 5 or 10 minutes, I went to the bathroom and husband put his 'man bag' with passport, mobile and money in it on the bed and went to see if our son was ok in his room next door. The door didn't lock automatically as in most hotels and when he came back about 2 minutes later, there was a well-dressed woman in the room. He thought she was one of the hotel staff, she smiled at him and let her out. As I left the bathroom, he asked me why the woman was in our room? I responded, “What woman”? and asked where his bag was? In a split second husband sprinted down the corridor and managed to grab hold of the woman making her get away down the stairs leading to the downstairs hotel exit. He grabbed her bag and she started yelling. He opened the bag and was able to retrieve it. While all this was going on, the hotel staff were grabbing my husband and trying to punch and pull him off the woman. They were yelling at him. As he had his bag back, he let her go, she ran off, and he showed the hotel staff his passport from the bag they saw him retrieve from the woman. They realised that he was a guest and that she was a thief so hotel security gave chase. She was caught by security and returned to the hotel. Later we were told that she had been yelling help, that my husband was trying to kill her and throw me over the balcony. Anyway we were all in shock at the treatment from staff but relieved that we had recovered our property. The police came, statements were made and it was all very traumatic -the holiday would have been ruined without a passport. The woman was very experienced and appeared to know exact layout of the hotel and that rooms didn't lock. While the hotel management were horrified at the theft and the easy access to our rooms, we thought they could have done a bit to apologise - such as a free drink or something on the house.
We'd be cautious about recommending it from a security point of view, paying particular attention to the fact that the hotel room doors didn’t auto lock, people have direct access from the street below and there was no safe in the room - until after the event - then a safe arrived.
- Grand Hotel Valparaiso
