The old joke goes that a guy was leaving his hotel and remarked to the clerk that he loved the hotel's new towels. They were so big that he had trouble closing his suitcase.
USA Today reports that, according to a survey, one out of five guests admit to stealing everything from robes to glasses. Historic hotels especially want their stuff back:
The Mission Inn in Riverside, Calif., operates a
foundation and museum to preserve artifacts, some of which have been
donated by former guests or sold back by collectors.
In 2006 alone, 400 items came back. In 2007, the
management created the Bringing It Home program to mark the hotel's
30th anniversary as a National Historic Landmark. Among the give-backs:
seven intricate brass bells with a confessional note saying they were
taken from the hotel's underground tunnels in a "not very funny"
teenage prank in the mid- to late 1960s.
Repatriation programs aren't strictly the
provenance of historic hotels. In 2003, Holiday Inn threw a Towel
Amnesty Day, inviting sticky-fingered guests to share their stories
about "borrowing" towels and promising absolution and possible
inclusion in the resulting book, About the Towels, We Forgive You.
Hotel pilferage is widespread. In an October
survey of members of the online travel community TripAdvisor, 22 percent of
the more than 2,500 respondents admitted helping themselves to
everything from bathrobes to decorative pieces to glassware.
The larceny amounted to an estimated $100
million in 2000, according to the American Hotel & Lodging
Association, though that figure also includes employee theft.
I don't feel so sorry for the hotels. I've had...
