Brits have been issued an alert when on holiday in a popular Spanish hotspot after a group of tourists had their hotel rooms cleared out by thieves. The thieves stole several thousand pounds’ worth of valuables, including their suncream. Nigel Durbin, 50, gathered with friends and family at the Caleta Dorada hotel in Fuerteventura for a week-long 50th birthday celebration. But while the solicitor and fiancée Joanne Gallagher, 52, were at the on-site restaurant, thieves entered their room.

They grabbed £8,000 of valuables, including Tom Ford glasses, gold jewellery, diamond earrings, Apple AirPods and an Armani handbag, on June 10. Yet this was not all. Down the corridor, Joanne’s sister Jayne Midgley, 52, and partner Paul Inglis, 62, discovered that thieves had taken three bags, jewellery and a phone, worth £1,200, and had even stolen their sun cream.

The family are convinced the criminals got in through the hotel doors, as there was no sign of forced entry and the doors seemed insecure. TripAdvisor reviews of the hotel note “police on scene re room thefts” in November 2024, while a reviewer from October said they “slept on the sofa next to the door all week” because they were concerned about break-ins.

“Four apartments in the same block got burgled when I was there”, they said.

Now, the family that recently fell victim to the crime are speaking out so other holidaymakers don’t fall victim to the same fate.

Jayne, an optical assistant from Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, said: “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 added: “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 arrived on June 6 and said they immediately felt unsafe due to their rooms’ faulty locking mechanisms. They noticed the door handle mechanism was loose and later noticed the lock featured a hole in the frame, which exposed the locking bolt. Jayne’s 32-year-old son, Jake Midgley, who was in a separate room, couldn’t lock his door at all, he said, and reported the issue to reception but they did not fix the problem.

Both rooms were left tidy after the burglaries, with no signs of forced entry or ransacking the room.

Nigel added: “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 said all doors and windows were locked before they headed out, but when they came back, the windows had been opened. Nigel and Joanne lost Tom Ford prescription glasses, a 9-karat gold chain, a pair of Apple AirPods Pro, a jewellery box containing necklaces, chains and earrings, including a locket that once belonged to Joanne’s late mother, and an Armani handbag containing ID documents.

Jayne said: “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 saying, ‘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.”

According to Comet, the Caleta Dorada Hotel did not respond to a request for comment.

This latest burglary comes as a British mum-of-two had her hotel room raided by teenage thugs in Benidorm. Becca Farley, 27, has warned tourists to “keep your wits about you”, after her holiday with her partner, son, six, and daughter, 11 had their holiday ruined, leaving her “absolutely petrified”.