Stealing From Your Hotel Room? One Chain Creates a Theft Menu

An Australian hotel chain offers guests a menu detailing costs of room items should guests want to steal, or “buy,” them.

It’s one thing to take home a hotel room’s toiletries. In fact, many properties want you to do just that. But a coat hanger? An umbrella? A robe? Intuitively, guests know they aren’t allowed to pack such items into their suitcases. And for those who don’t know, an Australian hotel chain now makes it clear. QT Hotels and Resorts has created a menu of room items and placed it on desks in all 200 of the chain’s suites, according to news.com.au.

The menu, which the hotel named “Desire,” features 14 items and their prices. Should any of the objects go missing after check-out, the hotel would charge guests’ credit cards. At the low end, an eye mask costs AUD $9 ($7.98), coat hangers AUD $10 ($8.88), a bathroom bowl AUD $19 ($16.87). Then there’s a ceramic animal at AUD $39 ($34.62), an umbrella for AUD $45 ($39.95), and a mirror for AUD $49 ($43.50). Most expensive of all is a bathroom robe, at AUD $175 ($158.92). Should a guest take all of the items in the room, the total “purchase” would add up to AUD $559 ($496.28).

The Desire list is “increasingly becoming more and more popular as it is not a normal hotel offering,” explained QT Hotels marketing and communications spokesperson Stephen Howard.

Still, a bowl or a mug or even a bathrobe are not as odd as some of the other things that guests have allegedly taken, or at least tried to swipe. News.com.au reports that light fixtures, linens, a Christmas tree, a suit of armor, and curtains are among other items that guests have coveted. Never mind a grand piano that three guests allegedly tried to steal from a Starwood hotel.

[Photo: QT Hotels/News.com.au]