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Guests Are Still Stealing Hotel Goods

The Today Show's travel detective Peter Greenberg reported live today from the Grand Hyatt at the Dallas/Ft. Worth Airport about hotel theft. And he doesn't mean, people stealing your valuables out of your hotel room. No, he's talking about hotel guests that make off with more than just the shampoo and conditioner provided by the hotel.

Apparently, hotel guests steal up to $100 million a year worth of hotel goods, according to the American Hotel & Lodging Association. A general manager at a Holiday Inn told Greenberg that a couple once requested a room near the parking lot because they were moving and wanted their U-haul to be close to the room. The next day when housekeeping went to clean the room, every single thing in the room was missing. The couple had apparently loaded up their U-haul with Holiday Inn furniture and then split.

Even worse, a man was able to make off with an entire marble fireplace from the Four Season Beverly Wilshire Hotel.

Yet the most popular item that guests like to steal is washcloths. Holiday Inn loses about 100,000 of these a year. Guests also kept stealing the remote controls at the Grand Hyatt in Dallas but it turns out those remote controls only work in the hotel. Perhaps this is why hotels started selling their wares on their websites. So if you really want the remote control from the Grand Hyatt, you can now buy it for $14 even if it still doesn't work outside the hotel.