Look at all those towels for the taking!
We freely admit to stealing hotel toiletries, stationery, pencils, pads and monogrammed slippers but we've yet to cop a towel or a pillowcase. Yet apparently, that's a big problem for hotels.
So big that there's a company, Linen Technology Tracking, hawking small, waterproof chips that can be implanted in hotels towels, bedsheets and robes to prevent guests from stealing them.
The New York Times reports that three hotels in Honolulu, Miami and Manhattan are using the chips. (But they wouldn't divulge their identities.) The Honolulu hotel has managed to reduce theft in their pool towels from 4,000 a month to just 750, which in turn saves the hotel cash in replacement costs.
But we aren't quite sure how these chips work.
Do they "ding, ding, ding" when a guest goes beyond a certain parameter outside the hotel or is it more like a GPS service so that a hotel could feasibly show up at your house demanding the return of their towels?
Yet if you're sitting on a stack of hotel towels lifted from your last stay in Honolulu, Miami or Manhattan, we wouldn't turn yourselves in just yet. It looks like the tracking technology is more just an inventory organization tool rather than a towel bounty hunter. But we'll certainly think twice about lifting even a hand towel during our next hotel stay.
(Source: Hotel Chatter April 2011)
No comments:
Post a Comment