Theft At The ANA Intercontinental Tokyo

A LoyaltyLobby reader sent me messages on Saturday regarding a serious incident that had taken place at the ANA Intercontinental hotel in Tokyo, Japan.

Remember that you can always email us, send a message via Facebook or use Twitter and include photos too. We’ll try to cover Reader Questions & Comments here several times a week.

Here’s the Facebook message from the reader on Saturday:

We are staying ANA Intercontinental Hotel Tokyo in Japan, someone was breaking in to my room when I and my wife were out.

My luggage locks was broken by the theft. The theft took everything out from my luggage, my iPad, bag, my wallet, cash, credit cards even one of my carry-on size Rimowa case gone.

The theft like crazy spending in Ginza Tokyo, spend $25,000 today. The police and hotel manager was helping me to do the report, took me 8 hours.

All my Disneyland schedule is ruined. Do you believe that?

The theft was calling pretend is me and said “My brother will visit hotel and pick up some stuff, please make a room key to him”. And an guy shows up said that is my brother, the front desk give the theft key without checking any ID and reconfirm with the my registered number at hotel. That is it, the guy was easy going to my room and full hand out of my room. 

Just want to share this case with you, this hotel is not safe and always beware the housekeeping. I’m still in this hotel and check out tomorrow, the hotel management said will give me a official response.

Here’s what I believed to have happened based on the initial and further messages I exchanged with the reader:

– The reader has stayed at the ANA InterContinental hotel in Tokyo number of times and is a Spire Elite member.

– Someone had called the hotel switchboard a number of times trying to get the reader’s room number and the switchboard had become suspicious and had notified the front desk about this activity.

– Someone had called the hotel and had told them to give a key to supposedly to the reader’s “brother”.

– Hotel front desk gave a key to this person without checking any identification.

– A person or persons entered the reader’s room and stole plenty of items including credit cards.

– The credit cards were later used on a $25K USD shopping spree (easy to dispute these charges with the credit card company).

– Police were called and reports filed.

– Hotel has refused to show the video footage showing the person or persons entering the room claiming that showing these would be a “privacy” violation.

– The hotel is comping the nights stayed.

Here’s the statement I have received from the General Manager of the hotel Mr. Michel Chertouh:

On Friday 22 of September a guest reported that personal items were missing from their room. This was immediately reported to the police and they are currently investigating the incident. The safety and security of our guests is of paramount importance to us and we are very working closely with the local authorities to help them with their investigation. We are unable to comment further while the investigation is underway.

Conclusion

The reader is a well known figure in Taiwan (we have protected his identity) and it seems that someone was aware of his travel plans to Tokyo and where he always stays when visiting the city. This incident has already been covered in Taiwanese media (access here).

The switchboard had informed the front desk that someone had been on a fishing expedition but regardless someone had added the person as a second guest and handed the key without checking any form of ID. This is truly terrible.

I have added a second person to my room/suite in a hotel number of times. I have always either called from my room or stopped by the front desk. The person here must have either called outside of the hotel or at least used phone outside of the guest’s room.

Credit card charges are easy to dispute and the reader is not liable for them.

I would say that the hotel has been negligent here. Some random person had been fishing for the reader’s room number and later added an unrelated person as a second guest who stole a significant amount of items, cash and used credit cards to the tune of $25K.