What you can and can’t steal from hotel rooms

MOST people have slipped something into their luggage during a hotel stay, but do you know which items you could end up being sent a bill for after your stay?

MOST people have slipped something into their luggage during a hotel stay, including the free slippers or the miniature toiletries.

But what actually happens if you do steal something slightly bigger, like a bathrobe, a fluffy towel or a cushion?

While hotels expect items that can’t be reused — like slippers and mini shampoo bottles — to go missing, there are pretty strict rules on what else should be going home in your suitcase.

If you judge their generosity wrong, you could end up with a hefty addition to your bill to cover the cost of the missing item.

Read on to find out what can and can’t be nicked …

MINI TOILETRIES — YES

Feel free to take all of the mini shampoo and conditioner bottles home with you, as well as the tiny sewing kits. In fact, now’s the time to fill your boots as this perk could soon be a thing of the past.

Hotels are starting to introduce larger bottles in bathrooms — fixed to walls so they can’t be swiped — which will be shared by guests. Hotels planning to do so include Intercontinental and Marriott, and the Premier Inn has already started making the switch.

Multi-use bottles will save hotels money and will also save on plastic waste, as millions of half-used bottles get thrown away each year.

Go for it when it comes to mini toiletries. Picture: Einalem

SLIPPERS — YES

Hotels expect you to steal the cheap white slippers in plastic packaging that sit inside the hotel wardrobe, as they never re-use them. In fact, staff encourage guests to wear them in their bedrooms as the floors are usually quite dirty.

Jacob Tomsky, the author of Heads In Beds: A Reckless Memoir Of Hotels, Hustles And So-Called Hospitality, told Sun Online Travel: “The dirtiest part of a hotel room are the carpets.

“Yes, they are vacuumed but they will almost never get a shampoo and a deep clean as there are constantly people staying in the rooms.”

They are also particularly useful on the flight home, so you don’t end up walking around the plane cabin in your socks.

Those slippers are made for walking … right outta the hotel. Picture: John Mitchell

UMBRELLAS — YES

Many fancy hotels provide umbrellas for their guests to use in case it’s raining outside, and while they are pricier to produce than a pair of slippers, you’re probably OK to take one home.

As the umbrellas are usually branded, they’re a good walking advertisement for the hotel.

Plus, it’s harder to track down who’s pinched one if they offer their brollies in the lobby.

DRESSING GOWNS — NO

In the past, guests were quite open about their pilfering of bathrobes from hotels.

But in recent years, most properties have made it quite clear that a missing robe will be added to the cost of the room — the warning usually comes on the clothes hanger.

STATIONERY — YES

By all means, take the branded pen and paperback notepad from your hotel room.

But leave anything that looks more permanent, like a leather bound pad, behind.

PILLOWS — NO

This one should be obvious, but in case it isn’t, hotels do not want you to take their pillows home. But people do still pilfer them — one London hotel has had so many thefts that they have been sending invoices out to thieving guests.

Even Noel Gallager has admitted to stealing pillows from hotel rooms. He revealed in 2015 that he has a personal stash taken from hotels in Italy, which he takes round the world with him.

He said: “You cannot go on tour without good pillows. I have stolen more pillows from Italy than anywhere else.”

Don’t be tempted to nick a pillow. Picture: JasonParis

THE MINIBAR — NO

Minibars used to be notoriously easy to steal from as guests would simply refill the bottle with water after use, but these days many hotels have installed sensors in their fridges so they can tell if an item has been moved.

However, that’s not to say you couldn’t get away with taking some items, as Jacob Tomsky told Mental Floss. “Keystroke errors, delays in restocking, double stocking, and hundreds of other missteps make minibar charges the most voided item.

“Even before guests can manage to get through half of the ‘I never had those items’ sentence, I have already removed the charges.”

However, while there are these rules against stealing items … 99 per cent of the time nothing will happen to the thieves.

Hands off the minibar though.

Hotel staff on the online forum Quora say most of the time, no action is taken against the offender because it is hard to pinpoint which guest stole something and they have already factored theft into their annual budget.

One member of the hospitality industry revealed that most hotels now factor in a degree of thievery into their annual budget.

Tyna Makpo said: “Perhaps a decade ago, it was a real issue for hotels, but nowadays towels are mostly considered operating supplies and their replacements are very carefully planned for within budgeting.

Don’t be like Ross from Friends.

“A towel or pillow is an operating cost, the guest is the income, which is why provisions for towels are somewhere around 200 per cent of the actual requirement.”

But getting a bit too light-fingered could cause you some serious problems down the line, because hotels are increasingly adding troublesome guests to “no-stay lists”.

One hotelier called Richard Gale said on Quora: “Main losses are small value items, like tea spoons.

“Even when we provide plastic ones, the thieving b**tards still manage to take our classy ones, to the tune of about 300 a year.”

This story originally appeared on The Sun and was republished with permission.