Hotel Salak clarifies

We would like to respond to Mr. Geoffrey Beere's letter published in this paper on 29 Aug. 2002.

Beere, an Australian passport holder with No. E 7544966, checked into our hotel on July, 20, 2002. After finishing his lunch on that day, he claimed that one of his bags was missing.

We tried to assist him to find the missing bag through various means. We contacted the police; we helped him to search the hotel area and even some cars and buses that were parked in the parking area. We also allowed him to replay our CCTV videos as he requested, although normally nobody is allowed to see these videos except the security personnel.

The two weeks Beere stayed he refused to pay a security deposit citing several reasons including that he had lost his credit card. We tried to charge him without success until Aug. 3, 2002 when we had to ask him to leave as he had not paid the hotel and service bills for two weeks. Finally, he paid all bills by credit card, which he previously claimed to have lost.

From the above two cases it is clear that he mixed up the two stories of the lost bag and not paying the hotel and service bills.

A hotel is a public area, which can be accessed by anyone. In that respect the hotel never asks visitors or guests to show their bags. The management cannot be held responsible for the loss of someone's belongings if kept in a public area. The customers will be asked to keep only their less valuable items in deposit boxes or where there is a baggage keeper in charge. However the baggage keeper would not be responsible if there were any items missing inside the bags since the keeper never checks what is inside the bags.

It is also common for individual travelers who check into a hotel, to be asked to pay a security deposit in advance. This procedure is intended to protect the hotel from guests who do not pay their bills.

We hope this explanation will give the readers a clear picture of this case.

AGUNG D. WALUJO, Manager, Hotel Salak, Bogor