What Can (And Can’t) You Take From Hotel Rooms?

When you’re packing your bags and checking out of a hotel, you might be tempted to grab a few extra soaps, a notepad, or maybe even a towel. Is that stealing or does the hotel expect you to swipe a few items? A hotel manager responds and lets us know what’s OK to take with you.

Michael Forrest Jones previously worked as a general manager in the hotel business before starting his own company, and took to Quora to answer this oft-pondered question:

Let’s start with the obvious: We expect guests to either use or to take consumable items — soap, shampoo, stationery, etc. You’re welcome.

Things like towels, hair dryers, lamps, TVs, and TV remotes (I think some guests are mutant aliens who eat TV remotes — like, gee, the remote can’t be counted upon to work with any TV anywhere except the one in the room), alarm clock radios, comforters, coffee makers, bedspreads, blankets, etc., are obviously intended for the next guests, are part of the furnishings, and we don’t want you taking them. They are also a bit more costly — in a cheap motel, almost as much as you paid for the room in some cases, and definitely more than our profit margin in many more cases — so yes, we go a little nuts when people help themselves to them.

Bathrobes occupy a grey area, depending on what sort of hotel you’re staying at. Modestly priced hotels provide them as part of the bedding, and want to launder them and hang them for another guest when you check out. However in a more upscale property, some people actually assume that they’re gifts — with the hotel’s blessing. Something like that is a good promotional item, if a little on the pricey side for a midscale hotel. If you did it at all, you’d only do it for your most important customers. I wouldn’t provide them in every room to every guest, but a VIP might find a bathrobe monogrammed with the hotel logo left in the room, as a gift. (Not all of them get opened or taken in places where I’ve seen it done that way.)

Likewise, I’d keep a few down comforters around, in case I spotted a reservation for someone who might specifically request it or are some sort of VIP. But this is another item that wouldn’t be provided in every room: only for VIPs who I knew ahead of time were coming, and who I knew liked such things. Keep it down to that scale, and you can launder them after every use — which is the way it should be, anyway, but never is. And most people know not to take them although, again, at that scale and given the VIP status of the only people that would have access to them, I wouldn’t fuss too much if someone took one. (They probably wouldn’t find one on the bed the next time they came, but just once? Nah, I’d probably growl a little bit and let it slide.)

Believe it or not, that “should you take it or shouldn’t you?” grey area is occupied by another, somewhat surprising, item: the Gideon Bible in the nightstand. Gideons’ International sent a guy to speak at a church I attended one Sunday morning, and the speaker shared that Christian organisation’s dirty little secret: supposedly the Gideons actually want you to steal the Gideon Bible from your hotel room, and can’t get enough people to do it. The hotel’s staff may or may not share the same feelings.

And then there’s the telephone book, although it’s largely an outdated item now. Before internet availability was as widespread as it is now, telephone directories wouldn’t last that long. If I checked into a hotel in a new town and there was a telephone directory in good condition in the nightstand, colour it gone. Back in the day, the local phone book was the best that could be had for various kinds of market research, and I knew that the hotel had been provided with a half pallet load from the phone company and could always get more, anyway.

One thing we tried in a hotel where I worked as a general manager (prior to launching my own company) was imprinted coffee mugs. Like the Gideon Bible, we can’t afford to offer it as a giveaway item to everyone, but we won’t fuss if you take one or two (we plan on losing about one of every five or six). Someone determined to collect the whole set from each of our hotels — you don’t have to steal them, we’ll give you a couple of them if you ask — has some potential as good, loyal, customers well worth the price of an occasional cheap coffee mug stolen from the room. The cost to us, even with the logo imprinted, is about two bucks. The promotional value as an advertising impression every time you pour a cup of coffee into your favourite mug in the morning, or have guests over for coffee at any other time, is worth much more.

Your room might have some other trinkets that you might be tempted to take. Want to steal the bathtub ducky? These are well-received promotional items in places I’ve been able to use them; seeing the ducky on top of your fresh towels assures you that the tub is clean and it’s also a touchstone and a conversation piece, similar to the Doubletree chocolate chip cookie. I don’t care if you take fifty of my 28¢ bathtub duckies — in order to get that many, you have to stay fifty times at a hundred bucks, give or take per night. Do the maths.

And finally, here’s a relic that you don’t see anymore: imprinted towels with the hotel’s logo. Originally intended as a deterrent to theft of the towels, they actually incentivised it: the hotel’s imprint on the towel gave it value as a souvenir to what otherwise would have been just an unremarkable, plain white towel.

A hotel can still order them if they shop around (and don’t mind paying extra for the imprint so you can go through your terry twice as fast, as more people take them home); but they’re not nearly as commonplace as they once were. In the years since, hotels have gone back to plain, white towels, their advantage being that they are unremarkable.

The Takeaway: Obviously, Michael can only speak from his experience at his hotel chain, and it likely varies from hotel to hotel. But if we’ve learned one thing here, it’s that you might be allowed to take more than just that shampoo. More importantly: if you want something, just ask. In many cases, the hotel may let you take the item with their blessing, and you’ll never worry about being an accidental thief.

“Is it stealing if you take certain items in your already paid-for hotel room like soap, shampoo, stationery, etc?” originally appeared on Quora. You can follow Quora on Twitter, Facebook and Google+

This answer has been edited for grammar and clarity.

Image adapted from lyeyee and gst (Shutterstock)