Vista Marina Hotel Still a Haven of Crime

Most of us read the email circulated by Dr Abigail Fernandez-Bautista about the hotel room thefts and management disregard at Vista Marina Hotel in waterfront road Subic Freeport followed by the subsequent email from the hotel that was an attempt to have us believe that this was an isolated incident and that they acted with honour.

We have learnt the hard way that Vista Marina’s email was merely a publicity smoke screen and that thefts of guests property not only remains a regular occurrence but that the staff and management still act in exactly the same slimy way as was described in the email of Dr Fernandez-Bautista.

Early in the morning on September 8th, 2008 some friends of my wife arrived from overseas and the hotel that I had booked for them had just sprayed for cockroaches so due to the smell they moved to Vista Marina Hotel without my knowledge.

On that evening we all went out for dinner and drinks. When my wife and I picked up our friends my wife and I went up to their room and my wife witnessed that our friends left their high end cell phone sitting on the table next to the TV. This fact we are all certain about. We left the hotel to go out at approximately 7:30pm.

By 9.30pm one of our friends called the cell phone of my friend and it was turned off, suggesting the phone was taken from the room between 7.30pm and 9.30pm

We dropped my friends back to the hotel later that evening and they went straight to sleep, the following morning they realised that the phone was missing, of course they checked everywhere including moving furniture in case it had been knocked off the table but it was no longer in the room. At about 11am they spoke to the hotel management, receiving a sarcastic and uncooperative response so when they advised us of the theft around 12:30 lunchtime my wife called the SBMA Police.

The manager showed us a monitor that was supposedly the CCTV footage of that night, however as the CCTV only makes a recording when there is movement there is no way of knowing it the system is started, stopped, paused or if there is movement outside the movement area. The CCTV also does not cover the balcony doors where it is possible to go from balcony to balcony to enter the rooms.

When the SMBA Police where at the Vista Marina Hotel in the presence of the manager my friend asked “do guests in this hotel get robbed often?” all the SBMA Police and the manager just looked down at the ground and did not say a word, in this case silence was a strong expression of the problems that are still occurring in that hotel. Unfortunately my friends had never heard of the famous wedding day robbery or the appalling record of the Vista Marina Hotel. They thought that as the hotel was inside the SBMA controlled area it was safe with a level of protection

When waiting for the boat to Grande Island, a woman who seemed to be the manager of the ferry terminal, told my friends that the same thing had happened 3 days earlier, and there was nothing on the CCTV that time either. She also told us that she had heard this happens once a week. If this is true why isn’t SBMA acting to close down this haven of crime, why does SBMA not uphold the safe image of the Subic Freeport?

When my friends came back from the Grande Island they filed a police complaint, and again went to see the hotel manager to ask if the hotel was going to do anything, unfortunately they were again met with sarcasm and continued suppression of information or the ability to speak with the owner.

The manager had clearly been through this situation a number of times. He was prepared with a smart answer for everything rehearsed and delivered with a really annoying smarmy smile.

Part of the manager’s defence was that he claimed that the hotel does not clean the rooms unless requested. However, my friend’s room was spotless after they had been out for the day. The rooms were cleared, bed made, and new towels given. So why does the manager claim that they don’t makeup rooms that have guests when they do? Who is he trying to protect?

A week after the thefts we wrote to the management of Vista Marina Hotel who didn’t answer, a week later we wrote again questioning there care for customers and they wrote back with a letter signed only “The Management”, we feel concerned that the owners or “management” act in such a guilty way that they need to hide their identity. Imagine if I was to check into this hotel and insist on registering as “The Guest”.


In their letter they said that they were not settling the matter because my friend had involved the Police. I checked the Police report and the police report was filed three days after the incident was reported to the management, so let’s be clear, they had three days to settle this before the robbery was formalized to the police and we gave them a further two weeks of emails to settle the matter before going public. They continue to hide their identity, not compensate the guests and act with contempt to the unsuspecting public as well as SBMA.


To add insult to injury my friends have now discovered extra charges in fact they even charged the rooms to their credit cards twice. It seems when they target you they go for all they can.
Enough is enough, when you search in Google or Yahoo about Subic Bay you come up with dozens of stories of people getting their belongings stolen from their rooms and extra charges billed to their credit cards ONLY in the Vista Marina. Vista Marina is the ONLY hotel with this disgraceful public reputation it’s time for the SBMA to terminate the lease of these undesirables who are dragging down the reputation of Subic.