Don’t steal: All in the hotel room ain’t part of the deal

Fruits baskets , bed linen and expensive amenity bowls are stolen theft by residents. The cost of stolen items becomes too big and hotels end up employing new ways to ensure things stay behind in the room.

What happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas but in case it’s Bali then it ends up getting viral on social media. The video of a group of Indian tourists being searched and shamed by the staff of a Bali hotel, who recovered items stolen from the hotel’s room, is widely being circulated.

The video showed many things found from the group, including a soap dispenser, hangers, earthen pots and even a hair dryer. Even though this video caught the eyeballs, but hotel rooms which are equipped with fanciest accessories and equipments are often targets of theft.

A Hyatt Regency Delhi spokesperson says, “Surprisingly last year, the most stolen item from rooms were torches, kept for the safety of guests, in case of an emergency evacuation. As a result it had to be fixed in a way that it could not be stolen. There have even been cases of the telephone being taken away. The most commonly stolen item — that does not come along with a room booking and are a hotel property — include hangers, bath towels, hair dryers, cups and saucers.”

Guests are routinely known to take along more expensive stuff, compelling hotels to employ new ways to ensure things stay behind in the room. Hair dryers, for instance, are attached to the bathroom wall so that they can’t be pulled out.

Chef Nishant Choubey says, “Hotels suffer losses due to such thefts. Apart from the towels and hairdryers, some of the commonly stolen items include expensive baskets used for keeping fruits, amenity bowls and ashtrays. These are made especially for that particular room and are expensive. I saw guests would take away specially- sourced umbrellas with the brand name or label on it. And often, to deal with such guests, the hotel would start replacing these artifacts with cheaper versions in rooms of repeat offenders.”

A hotel employee said on condition of anonymity that after a film crew left when its shoot got over, the hotel staff found things like pillow covers and the ashtray missing from one room.

Many celebrities tweeted about this incident and actor Gul Panag shared her experience through a series of tweets on such incidents of theft that she witnessed while interning at a hotel. One of the tweets read, “… a hotel during routine repairs, found the carpet under the bed missing. It had been cut out. Over the next few weeks many such rooms were found . On checking, it was found that one particular crew member over a 6-7 month period had stayed in each such room.”

Okay to take

• Dental kit

• Small tubes of bath gel, conditioner, shower caps

• Ear buds

• Slippers

• Laundry Bag

Not yours to take

• Hair dryer

• Telephone

• Bathrobe

• Towel

• Hangers

• Fruit bowls, cups, kettle, mugs

• Ashtray

• Miniatures and paintings for room decor

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