An Auckland woman was shocked to discover this note and photographs of herself and her son in a bottle on her hotel bed when she checked in. Photo / supplied
An Auckland woman was shocked to discover this note and photographs of herself and her son in a bottle on her hotel bed when she checked in. Photo / supplied
An Auckland woman was shocked to find photographs of her son and a personalised note she felt was "creepy" on her bed when she checked into a Christchurch hotel this week.
The woman, who does not wish to be named, was in the Garden City for work when she discovered the "weird" gift - and promptly checked out.
It featured photographs taken from her Facebook profile, and came just days after she noticed the hotel's night manager had been viewing her LinkedIn page.
"On the bed when I arrived was this bottle with a cork in it - I think it was a message in a bottle kind of thing - and rolled up in it were two pictures of my children, me and my son, and a note saying, 'We know travelling can be lonely so we've put a picture here of the wee one to keep you company'," she told the Herald.
The photographs were taken from profile pictures from her Facebook account, which made her realise someone from the hotel had looked at her social media profiles before she checked in.
"I just thought it was really weird that they'd been printed out on the computer, cut out and stuck there," she said.
"And being a female travelling by myself, I thought, 'this is a bit gross, why are you prying around on the internet?'."
An Auckland woman found photographs taken from her social media profile of her and her son when she checked into the Rendezvous Hotel Christchurch this week. Photo / supplied
Feeling that it may be unsafe to stay there, she immediately went down to reception, complained to the duty manager and checked out, choosing to stay at a different hotel instead.
A staff member from Rendezvous Hotel Christchurch called her the next day to apologise, but she said they did not offer any explanation.
"They didn't actually say why it was there or whether it was one staff member who'd done it without anyone's knowledge," she said.
"They just said we'd pass that feedback on."
The woman said she believed it was most likely a case of someone attempting to add a personalised touch to her room which had missed the mark.
"I said to them, I'm not angry, somebody obviously thinks they're doing a nice thing, it's just quite strange."
She added: "And you don't know what's happened in someone's life, some of those pictures are quite old and they wouldn't know if that was actually my child or not, or whether that child was still alive or not. I thought that was very weird."
A spokeswoman for TFE Hotels said the staff member at Rendezvous Hotel Christchurch took the photo from the woman's Facebook page as a welcome to the property.
"The intention was to give our guest a little comfort whilst away from her family, and was in no way meant to make her feel uncomfortable."
Social media influencers have posted about the personalised greetings waiting for them when they check in.
Stylist and popular US Instagram influencer Chriselle Lim posted a photo this week showing a framed photograph of her children, alongside a bouquet of flowers, chocolates and a bottle of champagne that were waiting for her when she checked into a hotel in Paris.
