A couple had their “trip of a lifetime” around the Highlands ruined after their hotel room was ransacked in London as they prepared to fly home.
Paul and Jackie Crofts estimate that they lost more than £7,000 worth of goods in the robbery at the Britannia International Hotel in London’s Canary Wharf.
Mr Crofts, 44, is originally from Thurso and the couple had travelled from their home in Phoenix, Arizona, for a tour to show his 43-year-old wife his homeland.
The trip took in Edinburgh, Caithness, Orkney, Skye, Inverness and Loch Ness, before heading south to York.
They also visited Paris and Amsterdam on their trip – before their holiday took a sour turn in its last few days in London.
The Crofts found their room raided after returning in the evening from a day sightseeing around the capital.
Among the items stolen was two lap-top computers, a diamond ring which had been hidden at the bottom of Mrs Croft’s make-up bag and a designer purse which had been bought on the trip and hadn’t even been taken out of its wrapping.
Mr Crofts, who works as a director for a credit card company, put the value for the stolen goods at about $10,000 – or just over £7,000 at the current exchange rate.
And he branded the staff at the hotel “obstructive” to attempts to get to the bottom of the theft.
He said: “We should never have stayed in the hotel in the first place, there was a huge list of defects but that is irrelevent now.
“It’s a pretty bad end to what has been a great holiday. It was supposed to be a trip of a lifetime and it has been right up to the end.”
He said that the hotel staff had checked to see if anybody had accessed the room while they were by checking the card reader on the door, which returned a negative result.
However, he was also thwarted in attempts to speak to the manager of the hotel about the theft, branding the staff’s approach “obstructive”.
Police were also called but have so far been unable to solve the crime.
However, Mr Crofts said he would replace at the stolen purse, which had been bought as a keepsake for his wife, before flying home yesterday afternoon.
He added: “I refuse to let this be the memory that we leave with.”