Someone thought to get someone to ring the police fairly quickly. The MW missing child protocol was set in motion immediately.
I haven't really followed the the phone records saga.
Wasn't there an earlier call to a GNR mobile number?
And 30 minutes after the alert to the reception the GNR station was alerted.
In the circumstances, running to the reception to alert them seems to have been a sensible course of action. The reception was informed of the emergency, but the point was to find her as fast as possible and she could still have been in the village.
Useless time could have been spent waiting to find someone who spoke English on 112, then having to explain the situation and then, "Your address, please?" "Ocean Club", Praia da Something". "Praia da what?" "Praia da Luz". "Where in the Ocean Club?" "On the corner near the tennis courts and a swimming pool." "Which tennis courts and which swimming pool?"...
Hiow many patrol cars would the GNR have had available at that time of night in pre-peak tourist season? When called, they came as quickly as they could, but it still took time to take notes as to what had happened and all the rest of it. In the meantime, the MW protocol was actually what was in place to look for her.
The parents were convinced that she'd been abducted, but there was always that hope that she'd woken and wandered, or that an abductor had dumped her within the village.