Some hotels really do have cameras in the rooms – in the bathroom even! – but at most hotels you have some measure of privacy behind the guest room door.
Not this guest, they feared, once they discovered that their towels were being tagged and tracked!
The towels in my hotel room are being tracked
byu/Tackit286 inmildlyinteresting
Hotels have been embedding RFID chips in towels for more than a dozen years. And this had led to actual prosecutions for towel theft.
But for the most part, chips are there to run the hotel’s linen inventory like a supply chain. Theft reduction is a side effect. They’re not GPS, they don’t track you, and there isn’t a retail‑style alarm at the front door at most hotels.
Still, telling people that they’ll be tracked deters theft! One hotel in Europe lays out the consequences for stealing towels. You will reported to the government and fined up to 15,000 euros (~ US$17,350).
We inform you that all of our towels are equipped with an invisible localizable chip from the RFDI system. The towels cannot be carried out of your room. In the event that the towels do not remain in the apartment, the company reserves the right to denounce you to the relevant agency with fines from €300.00 to €15,000.00 attentively. THE DIRECTION.
The Nairobi Hilton prosecuted someone for stealing two towels and they received a two year sentence. In the early aughts, IHG promoted ‘towel amnesty day’ but honestly I wouldn’t expect towel theft to be so common in a world of checked bag fees as there was back then, who travels with extra space for towels?
RFID tags are battery free, have a unique ID, and are identifiable when they pass by a nearby reader. It’s like a barcode you can scan in bulk without line‑of‑sight.
They’re rugged for industrial laundry and survive a few hundred wash cycles. Hotels and laundries read carts of towels and sheets at choke points (laundry room doors, loading docks, storerooms) to reconcile what left and came back.
- Properties and off‑site laundries bulk‑scan carts to automate counts, prevent mix‑ups between clients, and track item lifecycle/wash counts. Most loss reduction comes from the laundry as control point (not the guest).
- Each item’s wash count and “age” are tracked so worn pieces can be retired before guests see them.
- The fact that items are tagged is a theft deterrent. But most towel disappearances that are stopped is avoidance of misrouting in the laundry flow, not just guest theft.
It’s theoretically possible to log individual towels to a room, but that’s not generally what’s done. Tracking happens at cart/closet/floor/department level, not paired to a guest. Some systems can associate batches to housekeeping closets or even rooms during distribution using handheld devices but I don’t think I’ve ever seen this done in practice.
And typically hotels don’t have beeping gates that would detect towels going out the door. It would also be possible to place antennas at hotel exits to alert staff that a tagged item was leaving. You can imagine the guest experience consequences of false positives! In any case, the tags are not GPS and there’s no “live tracking” once you’re off property.
@ Gary –If you really want their cheap, scratchy towels, and if the tracker is on the tag, you could just bring a pair of scissors with you.
If it was truly that important to me to steal a towel from a hotel I’d put it in a Faraday bag if there was a RFID tracker.
One unless it’s a high end hotel the towels never were worth taking. Two simply do a charge back. Amex is no questions asked. 17k for a towel elicits a FU MFER.
You can easily disable an RFI chip by sticking it in a microwave for 10 seconds.
This is a great technical improvement. I am sick and tired of seeing Gary surrepticiously leaving hotels at 3am barely able to walk under the weight of the pile of towels he is walking out with. We all pay for this, now he can.
You can threaten whatever damages you want, doesn’t mean folks are gonna pay, or that a court will enforce. For instance, Melania demanded $5 billion from Hunt, but that’s never happening, mostly because Melania would need to go through discovery, and lying liars usually don’t like that phase of trial.
Well I certainly wouldn’t want to be denounced to the relevant agency. What an awful fate. Europeans, you’re so ridiculous.
This would be so handy if you were Arthur Dent, because nothing’s more important than knowing where your towel is.
Only 1990 can find a way to make hotel towel tracking also relate to the current administration. Seriously, go stand barefoot in the grass once in a while, or find a good therapist to speak with. Either one will help.
@Mantis — Are you one of these so-called ‘Passport Bros’? I’m surprised Gary hasn’t included that Reddit post of the guy with the IBM hat, “thumb cardio in the security line”… *cough*
@ 1990 — Sarah makes a good suggestion (for all of us).
When flying Virgin Atlantic Airways…They have little airplane shaped salt and pepper shakers. Read the bottom…They read “Pilfered from Virgin Atlantic Airways”.
Hertz used to rent Shelby Ford Mustang’s. People used to rent for a weekend and switch engines with a lesser Ford engine.
Hotels largely use RFID on towels to track laundry (as most hotels send them out), not customers. I’m not sure how many hotels will want to go after a customer over a (Most likely used) <$10 towel.
Any theft is bad, but honest guys…This is small potatoes.
@Gene — Ah, yes, ‘touch grass’ and ‘get help’ is genuine advice, always. ALWAYS.