Bad Experience in Loreland

On March 31, 2012, the IB Asia desk held our Strat Session. First part concluded in our office at 2 WSQ since two of our team members had a Saturday shift.

At around 12nn, we left for Rizal where the second part of our activity will be conducted. We arrived at Loreland Farm Resort a little after 2pm.  We were escorted to our room by Rovie Rosaldo, the personnel who assisted us with the reservations. When we got there, housekeeping personnel were still in the room fixing the beds, bathroom etc. They said that the previous occupants of the room checked out late so they didn’t have enough time to clean/arrange the room before we arrived. It didn’t matter to us so we decided to go inside the room anyway and choose which beds we will be sleeping on later that evening. We were relaxing for a bit since we were advised by Rovie that the facilitator of the team building activity will fetch us at around 3pm. A few minutes after 3pm, Rovie arrived with Steve Villareal who she introduced to us as the one who will be conducting the team building activity. We were then advised by Rovie to leave all of our stuff (that is not waterproof) in the room since it is raining and some activities will involve water. We obliged making sure that the windows are properly locked as well as the door. We also closed the curtains to avoid tempting passersby / anyone looking into the room.

The team building activity area was not near our room, we had to go on a 300 steps steep stairs to reach the area. The activity took around two and a half hours to finish. During the team building proper, all of us were always together as seen in the video shot by Patricia’s driver who was also always with us.

Right after the activity, we proceeded to hike back up the stairs. My manager was the first one in since most of us didn’t want to enter the room yet since we left the air conditioning on and we are all wet and cold. He then proceeded to shower. A teammate went inside as well to get Robert’s wallet since he had to buy a new pair of slippers since he broke his during the activity. When they went to the store, they realized that there was no money inside the wallet. Both went back to the room to check. It was at this point that Robert found out that aside from his money his iPhone4s and DSLR camera were missing. At this point all of us checked our belongings. A team member also lost money and my manager discovered that he lost his mobile phone and some cash as well.

Patricia reported the incident to the Loreland personnel, and after some time some personnel arrived to check with us as to what happened. We had to ask them to call the police for us as well to investigate. We believe it to be an inside job since the door was still locked when we arrived and all of our stuff are still in order. When the police officers were there, they never bothered to enter our room and just asked questions from the outside. It was at this time when my manager found out that his watch was also missing. Myself and another member of the team also discovered that our wrist watches were also missing.

We had to stay in the room from around 6pm to 9pm waiting for someone who has the authority from the resort to take action. We decided that we won’t be spending the night at this place so we packed up our things and left the room. We then proceeded to the admin office where the General Manager (Ryan Marinas) was supposed to talk to us. He then arrived together with two other personnel to talk to us. Bear in mind that we still haven’t eaten at this point and we had to ask them to bring us something to eat. The discussion ended with Loreland not taking ownership of what happened but instead mentioned that they will be conducting an investigation. This is after the GM mentioned that he can assure us that his personnel were not involved in this incident. He even mentioned that we should have declared our belongings or left them inside their safety deposit box at the admin office. We mentioned that we were advised by Rovie to leave our things in the room and we were never advised to declare anything nor leave our valuables inside a safety deposit box.

As of this writing Loreland had said that they have submitted their findings to the police and their next action will be based on the result of the investigation of the police.