Hotel Offers Sticky-Fingered Guests a Chance to Clear Their Conscience

One hundred-year-old hotel is offering “no questions asked” amnesty to sticky-fingered guests harboring a guilty conscience over pilfered items.

A lot of things walk out of a hotel over the course of 100 years, including quite a few that were meant to stay. We’re talking towels, bathrobes, silverware, ashtrays and who knows what else?

Edmonton’s Fairmont Hotel Macdonald hopes to soon find out. In honor of its centennial, July 5, 2015, the property has issued a call for past guests to return stolen goods without retribution.

“There’s obviously been a lot of items that have come in and out of the hotel since 1915,” said Steven Walton, the hotel’s director of sales and marketing. “We’ll be doing a no-questions-asked kind of amnesty event where you can drop off old memorabilia at the hotel and share stories.”

The program is modeled on one at the Fairmont Palliser in Calgary, a sister-property, which accepted the return of a silver tea service and a letter from former U.S. first lady Eleanor Roosevelt earlier this year. Chateau Laurier Hotel, Ottawa, launched a similar program in 2012. Items returned included a veteran bellman’s uniform, iconic restaurant menus and a set of upholstered chairs.

Of particular interest to the Edmonton hotel are items branded with logos of the property’s earliest owners, Grand Trunk Railway and Canadian Pacific. The hotel does not intend to place any of the returned goods into service, rather they will be used to create a display for guests.

“We’re going to take all of those items, and we expect quite a bit, and we’ll do a tour for the general public,” said Walton.

[Photo: Fairmont Hotel Macdonald]