Hotels Do Not Offer Five-Finger Discounts

Fairfax, California: August 3, 2008

To contain theft today, hotels threaten you the consumer with pox, excessive credit card charges, kidnapping of first born, and other dire consequences if anything turns up missing from the room on your watch. But let’s face it: Folks love to get something for free. Seemingly everyone in the traveling public is guilty of popping stationery and unused soap, shampoo, or lotion in the suitcase before checkout. That is socially acceptable behavior. Braver souls with far stickier fingers gaffe ice buckets, coffee makers, or tacky framed art on the way out. But the primary universal target has always been towels.

About 25 years ago on a family trip to Wisconsin, my parents lifted a few of those stiff white bath towels emblazoned with the regal emerald green Holiday Inn logo. Mom must have thought they would make fine beach towels. I recall embarrassment with the prospect of taking these towels to the local pool – that is – until I realized that the other kids’ parents sent them out with identical “hot towels” gleaned from Holiday Inns, too.

Long ago, luxury hotels and resorts from Monterey, California, to Miami, Florida, offered their status conscious patrons a way out of the guilt: purchase the plush towels and fuzzy bathrobes enjoyed during the stay and take them home. This philosophy trickled down to the modest chain motels as well. A Super 8 Motel in Abilene, Texas, for example, advertises that all of the room’s accoutrements – including the multi-colored bedspreads and skimpy towels – are available for sale. Simply check the price list on a laminated sheet contained in the drawer of the nightstand and place an order with the front desk.

The very idea that nothing is to be borrowed permanently from a hotel room is simply understood, not overtly advertised. But while staying at the quaint Melsask Motel in Melville, Saskatchewan, eight years ago, I discovered a firm admonishment posted on a wall next to the room door. The faded, water-stained 3”x5” cardboard sign read:

Please … LEAVE KEY ON DRESSER – TURN OUT LIGHTS! If You Leave Anything, We’ll Send it to You … If You Take Anything, We’ll Send for You. License Number on File. THANK YOU, COME AGAIN!

Form 521N - Hotel Systems & Supply Ltd., Winnipeg

It doesn’t get any plainer than that. Thoughts of requisitioning the old cotton bed sheets – assuming any such notions existed - were extinguished immediately.

But, ironically enough, I couldn’t resist the temptation to swipe that sign, smuggle it from Canada into the United States, and affix it to a bulletin board above my desk at home. Let this minor transgression be our little secret, lest the management of the Melsask crosses the 49th parallel and sends for me.