We stayed at this hotel after our Alps getaway for my wife's birthday, for two nights from December 20th to 22nd, 2025.
We arrived by car in the evening. Due to construction, the hotel is only accessible from the embankment. Parking is not permitted at the hotel, despite the availability of several parking spaces. Oh well, rules are rules. They took our keys and towed the car to a paid parking lot. We gave our passports to the receptionist. Seeing Katya's birthday (December 21st) in her passport, he actively offered to upgrade our room. We initially thought it was an upgrade from the hotel for her birthday, but it wasn't. An extra charge of 800 francs! Declining this "generous" offer (on the hotel website, the difference between rooms was only 350 francs), we went up to a room with a "gorgeous view" of the mine. "But we don't have to cover the windows with curtains," my wife joked, since we couldn't get any sunlight even during the day.
Looking at the beautiful photos of the hotel with its huge rooftop sign on various search engines, one gets the illusion that d'Angleterre is a large, pompous hotel with a main entrance on the main street. In fact, the hotel occupies a small part of the building on the right side, with an entrance on a secondary street. The hotel has no spa or gym, the rooms are small, and the elevator is tiny.
The next day, December 21, 2025, we booked the Windows restaurant inside the hotel for 7:00 PM to celebrate a birthday. This seemed like a good idea, as we had a long walking tour and going somewhere else for dinner would have been too late and inconvenient.
Returning to the hotel after the tour around 6:40 PM, we ran to our room to quickly change and go down to dinner. In our haste, my wife left her backpack on a chair in the room.
Arriving around 11:00 PM from dinner, we went to bed. On December 22, 2025, when I woke up, I asked Katya to prepare money for the guide, as we had a tour to Gruyères booked after breakfast. She opened her backpack to get her purse with her wallet inside and discovered that both the bag and wallet were open and the money was gone. They had taken absolutely everything – 1,500 euros and even 20,000 rubles. We called reception, and a hotel employee came to us – an elderly man. He asked what time we had left the tour the previous day and when we had returned to our room after dinner. Then he left and never returned. After two hours of waiting, no one had come to see us. My wife went to reception to find out if they were going to do anything. A woman of about 55, apparently the manager or director of d'Angleterre, reported that two cleaning ladies, Turkish citizens, had come to our room while we were away, but that they were not there now, as... Their shift had already ended. And she wouldn't call them! Katya asked to call the police, but the manager refused.
My wife had to walk to the police station to file a report about the theft of money. At the station, she said it would be enough to take fingerprints from the backpack, bag, and wallet and compare them with the cleaning staff's fingerprints. Since the items were leather, fingerprinting could be performed within 2-5 days of contact and 100% solve the crime.
Back at the hotel, a Russian-speaking young man was already at the reception desk. He said they'd just received a call from the police station, saying they wouldn't investigate the case. That it was our own fault for not putting the money in the safe. And they had no intention of dealing with their employees.
We were very upset, not so much because of the money, but because of the attitude! Yes, it's definitely advisable to keep money and jewelry in a safe. But that doesn't mean the staff is allowed to steal everything that wasn't hidden in the safe! Especially in a 5-star hotel that costs €1,000 per night! Moreover, management covers for the thieves in every way possible. This is the wonderful "gift" the hotel gave Katya for her birthday.
Original TextTranslation provided by Google
