The Aloft Rogers-Bentonville hotel in Arkansas apparently has a laminated sign in guest rooms outlining the property’s “Hotel Towel Policy.” It says that guests will be charged a variable fee up to $50 per dirty towel.

To maintain the highest standards of cleanliness and comfort for all guests, we kindly ask you to take note of our towel policy:

Normal Use: Towels are provided for your convenience and are intended for drying off after a shower.

Stains: Please inform our housekeeping staff if a towel becomes stained. We understand that accidents happen and will do our best to clean the towel.

Severe Stains: A replacement fee of $20-50 per towel may be applied to your bill for severe stains that cannot be removed through normal cleaning processes.

Avoiding Charges: To avoid any charges, please use towels responsibly and avoid using them for activities that may cause stains (e.g., removing makeup, or cleaning shoes).

Thank you for your cooperation and understanding.

This seems insane. In fact, I wouldn’t think this was real if I hadn’t just written about a Hilton Diamond member banned from a Southern California DoubleTree after ruining towels that were in the bathroom after trying to clean up from an injury in the shower. The hotel charged $150 for the used towels, banned the customer, and didn’t even inform them of it.

While there’s no way that an Aloft hotel is spending $20 to replace a towel, and at most shouldn’t the guest be responsible for the depreciated value of said towel (and given tremendous leeway – some towel loss is included in the room rate), towels are a major expense for hotels. Stopping theft of towels, too, accrues real savings. For instance, hotels have been embedding RFID chips in towels for over a dozen years.

• A single hotel has saved $16,000 per month by reducing its towel thefts each month from 4,000 down to 750 by attaching washable RFID tags to its towels.
  
• I assume that they aren’t actually tracking down towel thieves, rather by letting guests know that the towels are tagged this serves as a deterrent.
  
• Presumably the deterrent would work just as well by telling guests that the RFID tags are in the towels, without any need to make the actual investment, at least as long as they are able to keep their lack of technology investment a secret.

If one hotel can save $16,000 per month or $192,000 per year – figures that were prior to pandemic inflation – you’d expect $28.8 billion a year in savings though? Not all hotels use the same quality of towels, and on average they’re replacing towels every couple of months anyway. Hotels aren’t spending more than $1 billion a year on towels though. So the savings doesn’t scale here. But there’s still big money involved in hotel towels.

The Nairobi Hilton once prosecuted someone for stealing two towels and they received a two year sentence. Twenty years ago IHG promoted ‘towel amnesty day’ but honestly I wouldn’t expect towel theft to be so common in a world of checked bag fees, who travels with extra space for towels?

Of course guests steal far more than just towels, with 5-star hotels more likely to see higher-value items taken – like tablet computers, artwork, TVs, and mattresses – though it’s unclear whether this is because they are more likely to have higher-value items in the first place or whether wealthier guests are more likely to steal?

Forty nine hotels reported mattresses being stolen in a two year period.Many hotels don’t admit the thefts so the real number is higher. How does a guest even do this without getting caught? Even if they don’t get noticed walking through the lobby with a mattress, when housekeeping goes into the room to turn it for the next guest, and finds the mattress gone, the hotel knows who stayed there last.

In 2018 a family was caught on video in Bali with items stolen from the hotel they stayed at packed in their luggage. The hotel demanded they open their bags for inspection and a big argument ensued. As the bags are searched one stolen item after another gets revealed.

We’ve heard about a grand piano stolen from a Sheraton lobby, and about guests who steal televisions from their room.

And, would you believe: carpet, light fixtures, curtains and mirrors? Even door hinges have been stolen. The Four Seasons Beverly Wilshire (the Pretty Woman hotel) had a fireplace stolen.

The thing is – at least until hotels began replacing miniature bottles with wall-mounted toiletries – hotels actually wanted you to take those mini bottles. They don’t want you to raid the housekeeping cart, but the ones in your room were fair game in hopes you would think of them and the brand when you use them. Hyatt specifically implored you to do it!

So while there’s skepticism over efforts to combat towel theft, within the bounds of good hospitality it makes economic sense. A charge for dirtying a towel, though? That’s not a hotel I’d stay at even though I don’t recall severely soiling bathroom linens.

(HT: Loyalty Lobby via One Mile at a Time)