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A group of holidaymakers have sounded the alarm after their hotel rooms were ransacked by thieves who made off with £9,000 worth of valuables - even swiping their sun cream. Nigel Durbin, 50, had organised a week-long celebration at the Caleta Dorada hotel in Fuerteventura, Spain, for his milestone 50th birthday bash with friends and family.

However, while the solicitor and his fiancee Joanne Gallagher, 52, enjoyed a meal at the hotel's restaurant, burglars broke into his room. The crooks made away with a haul of £8,000, including designer Tom Ford spectacles, lavish gold jewellery, diamond studs, Apple AirPods, and an Armani tote, on June 10.

Meanwhile, just down the hall, Joanne's sister Jayne Midgley, 52, and her partner Paul Inglis, 62, discovered that thieves had pilfered three bags, assorted jewellery, a mobile phone, and bizarrely, their sun cream, totalling £1,200. Convinced that the culprits accessed their rooms via the hotel doors due to the absence of forced entry and seemingly insecure doors, the family is adamant about a security lapse.

Concerns about the hotel's security have been echoed in TripAdvisor reviews, with one from November 2024 mentioning "police on scene re room thefts", and another from the previous October revealing they "slept on the sofa next to the door all week" out of fear of break-ins, adding "Four apartments in the same block got burgled when I was there". Determined to prevent others from suffering a similar ordeal, the family has decided to go public with their story.

Jayne, an optical assistant hailing from Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, remarked simply: "Everything seemed to be fine. We went out about 8.20pm like we did every night to the restaurant onsite. We weren't aware of anything that had gone on. We come back about 11.30pm and we all unlock our doors - the doors were quite stiff, very hard to open and close-and we got in and my bedroom window was open. I'd taken my bikini top off and I knew where I'd placed it and it was far away. I looked down, and it looked like someone had gone in my bag. I just knew."

Nigel chimed in: "God knows how much time and effort it's going to take to replace this stuff. The hotel just doesn't give a damn. This could have been stopped before if they'd said, 'please make sure you carry all personal items of high value with you at all times. Do not leave them in the rooms.'I've been a sitting duck. I've been allowed to stay in a hotel that's a high burglary risk and not been told about it."

The family touched down on June 6 and immediately felt uneasy due to the faulty locks on their rooms. They noticed the door handle mechanism was loose, and later spotted a hole in the frame which exposed the locking bolt.

Jayne's 32 year old son Jake Midgley, who was staying in a separate room, couldn't lock his door at all, he says, and reported the issue to reception but they didn't fix the problem, he claims. Both rooms were left tidy after the burglaries, with no signs of forced entry or ransacking the room.

Nigel revealed: "Nobody knew the contents of our room except cleaners and maintenance staff. We'd bumped into some other guests who told us that some properties had been burgled, but I didn't think much of it at the time. You didn't really want to believe it. But nonetheless I was on my guard." He confirmed all doors and windows were locked before they ventured out - but upon their return, the windows had been opened.

"Jayne got in first to their room and immediately shouted out, 'stuff's missing!'," Nigel recounted.

Nigel and Joanne were left without Tom Ford prescription glasses, a 9-karat gold chain, a pair of Apple AirPods Pro, a jewellery box filled with necklaces, chains, and earrings, including a locket which once belonged to Joanne's late mother, and an Armani handbag containing ID documents. Jayne and Paul reported that thieves took "all sorts" including two new pairs of earrings, two bags, a rucksack and a cosmetic bag with jewellery in, sunglasses, Jake's phone - and sun cream.

She criticised the reception staff for being "very blase about it".

"Security and police turned up straight away but they just looked and said, 'well, somebody can't get in'," Jayne recalled. We'd not opened any other window. So they'd got in with a key and opened the bedroom window to make it look like a burglary. And reception kept asking, 'have you left your doors open, your windows open' and we were like, 'no, of course not!'".

"They were making it out like we were stupid. The manager actually said, well, there's been quite a lot of burglaries in the area. And we were like, what? If we'd been told, you know, there's a high risk of burglary, make sure everything's in the safety deposit box." The Caleta Dorada Hotel did not respond to a request for comment.