What Hotel (and airline) amenities do you leave behind, if any?
Feb 19, 2001, 10:16 pm
#77
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Join Date: Sep 1999
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
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During its rennovation period this year, the manager of the Sherton Park Tower in London is asking guests to take a small Channel Island [Guernsey] toy teddy bear home with them. The bear is dressed in a sweater which reads: "Please Bear With Us". Mine will be joining his Conrad Singapore cousin.
Feb 20, 2001, 10:50 am
#78
Join Date: Feb 2001
Location: MCI ** UA Plat, Marriott Lifetime Plat
Posts: 1,262
I've lately taken to picking up the "extra" consumables each day, and taking them home to a local battered women's shelter. This typically includes shampoo, lotion, conditioner, and facial/bath soaps. Does anyone else hoard this stuff for charity, or just take home the last fresh ones of the week? I typically stay 4 nights, so take hoem 3 complete "sets" of soaps/shampoo/etc to donate...
Feb 21, 2001, 10:33 am
#79
Join Date: Feb 2000
Location: Charlottetown/Ottawa, Canada
Posts: 346
Hoo boy, what a thread.
According to Judith Martin, aka Miss Manners, it is appropriate to use anything in your hotel room, while you are staying there. Her reasoning is that the grooming supplies and stationery are for your use as a guest. She notes that a lot of people take home the toiletries and donate them to charity, but believes that it is far more charitable to spend your own money and purchase donations that to donate the stuff from the hotel.
I don't go quite that far. In the past I've been guilty of taking all the toiletries and a good deal of the stationery home with me, but now I only take what's leftover from what I've used. Actually, at one point I was taking back stuff that I had schlepped home before.
I stay in hotels enough that the half-used bars of soap I take home see me through until I travel again. And surprisingly enough, a lot of otherwise decent hotels don't have seals on their bottles of shampoo or skin lotion or conditioner, so who knows if anybody else has already used them? I'll use it if the bottle is sealed, and take home what's left in that bottle. If it isn't, I'll go out and buy a small bottle of my favourite.
I use the shoe cloths all the time; I hate wearing overshoes so I try to clean and polish my footwear regularly. I take the used one home.
The stationery I'll use while I'm there; sometimes I've completely used it up writing down phone numbers and such or making notes for a presentation, but I've got personalized stationery at home (a gift from Canadian Airlines some years ago).
I took home a Bible twice; once because I didn't have a copy of the Old Testament and once because it was a bilingual (English-French) Bible. The Gideon Society provides these and is quite happy for people to take them home; they are specifically in the business of giving free Bibles away in order to get people involved in Christianity.
Now to admit what I actually stole. Once I came back to my room and found that the maid had left a sign saying that my room was being serviced hanging on the door. I brought it in, as my room had been done, and eventually it wound up in my suitcase, mostly because the way it was worded made me laugh out loud (it made the hotel sound like a rooms-by-the-hour kind of place).
According to Judith Martin, aka Miss Manners, it is appropriate to use anything in your hotel room, while you are staying there. Her reasoning is that the grooming supplies and stationery are for your use as a guest. She notes that a lot of people take home the toiletries and donate them to charity, but believes that it is far more charitable to spend your own money and purchase donations that to donate the stuff from the hotel.
I don't go quite that far. In the past I've been guilty of taking all the toiletries and a good deal of the stationery home with me, but now I only take what's leftover from what I've used. Actually, at one point I was taking back stuff that I had schlepped home before.
I stay in hotels enough that the half-used bars of soap I take home see me through until I travel again. And surprisingly enough, a lot of otherwise decent hotels don't have seals on their bottles of shampoo or skin lotion or conditioner, so who knows if anybody else has already used them? I'll use it if the bottle is sealed, and take home what's left in that bottle. If it isn't, I'll go out and buy a small bottle of my favourite.
I use the shoe cloths all the time; I hate wearing overshoes so I try to clean and polish my footwear regularly. I take the used one home.
The stationery I'll use while I'm there; sometimes I've completely used it up writing down phone numbers and such or making notes for a presentation, but I've got personalized stationery at home (a gift from Canadian Airlines some years ago).
I took home a Bible twice; once because I didn't have a copy of the Old Testament and once because it was a bilingual (English-French) Bible. The Gideon Society provides these and is quite happy for people to take them home; they are specifically in the business of giving free Bibles away in order to get people involved in Christianity.
Now to admit what I actually stole. Once I came back to my room and found that the maid had left a sign saying that my room was being serviced hanging on the door. I brought it in, as my room had been done, and eventually it wound up in my suitcase, mostly because the way it was worded made me laugh out loud (it made the hotel sound like a rooms-by-the-hour kind of place).
Feb 22, 2001, 6:45 am
#81
A FlyerTalk Posting Legend
Join Date: May 1999
Posts: 46,817
A lot of the goodies are for sale as luxury hotels plunge into the retail business, peddling everything from mattresses to mustard under their own private labels. What's driving them is not just the desire to improve service and discourage theft, which takes an estimated $100 million bite out of hotels in the United States annually.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/22/living/22HOTE.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/22/living/22HOTE.html