I caught a hotel worker sniffing and stealing my underwear — I feel so violated
A UK mom traveling with her 11-year-old son was petrified to discover a hotel worker sneaking into their room and sniffing and stealing her underwear.
The horror began for Rara Armstrong, a self-employed model and content creator from Gloucester, Gloucestershire, when she was on a family vacation in May at Hotel Ambassador Playa II in Benidorm, Spain.
That’s when a staff member looked her up on OnlyFans using her booking information, according to Kennedy News and Media.
The 39-year-old — who booked the visit through the travel site LoveHolidays — claimed she felt “violated” when the “really overly friendly” man “inappropriately” asked for her number and to take her out for coffee.
When she declined, saying she was accompanied by her son, he even said the boy could come along.
She said no, but he persisted, asking for her number.
“I was, like, ‘No,’ and I felt really uncomfortable,” Armstrong recalled to Kennedy News. “He just wouldn’t drop it. I said, ‘I’ve got a boyfriend,’ just so he’d leave me alone.
Hours later, she discovered that the worker — who proclaimed she was too “sexy” to resist — had subscribed to her OnlyFans, which left her “a little bit creeped out.”
“He was messaging me [on OnlyFans] and saying, ‘Oh, I can’t believe you’re in Spain.’ At first, I didn’t click that it was him,” she explained. “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.”
He also told her she was too “sexy” to resist after she reprimanded him for being unprofessional.
Though Armstrong didn’t make a formal complaint to avoid ruining the first day of vacation, she did explicitly ask him to leave her alone, which he did — until the last day of the trip.
On the final day of their five-day stay, the hotel employee went into their room while they were out, she said, and left a bottle of Prosecco as an apology, a gesture that left Armstrong feeling uneasy.
She decided to set up her son’s iPad to face the door and record before they went out again for the evening.
Just 15 minutes later, a “surreal” moment was caught on camera.
The employee could be seen entering the room and rummaging through what Armstrong said was her dirty laundry bag, pulling out her G-string thong, sniffing it and stuffing it in his back pocket.
“He sniffed them a few times. He carries on snooping; I don’t know what he was looking for. As he leaves, he sniffs them again and puts them in his back pocket,” she recalled.
“It was crazy. I wasn’t expecting something like that.”
Armstrong said the experience left her feeling “horrible,” “really violated” and “scared,” she shared.
“I thought, ‘If I’d been on my own, would he have come in when I was asleep?'”
LoveHolidays apologized to Armstrong and said the employee was fired the next morning after she reported the incident.
“We are very sorry to hear of Ms. Armstrong’s experience while on holiday,” a LoveHolidays spokesperson said in a statement to Kennedy News. “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.”
But Armstrong felt like she was between a rock and a hard place.
“It just really annoyed me because I thought I should have just reported him straight away when he was inappropriate on day one,” she said. “I just didn’t want to ruin the holiday as we’d just arrived, and I was hoping if I told him to leave me alone he would, but obviously it escalated,” she admitted.
However, the hotel reportedly refused any compensation because she didn’t report it until after she had left. Armstrong claimed she didn’t have time to contact the police since it happened on the last day and she had a flight to catch to get home.
“The hotel are saying they told me to call the police and I refused, which is a complete lie. They basically told me not to show the video to anyone,” Armstrong claimed.
The Ambassador Hotel Playa II declined to comment to Kennedy News.
Now, she’s hoping to warn other women to avoid “a real nightmare” by tipping off a hotel about “creeps” immediately and even setting up cameras, like she did, if they have any suspicions of wrongdoing.
“Maybe carry a door lock [for] 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.
“My advice to others would just be to be really vigilant,” Armstrong continued. “If someone is being creepy towards you, report them straight away.”
