The FINANCIAL — Looking through the sundries sold at the Dry Bridge Market in Tbilisi you can notice slippers with the brands of premium hotels in Tbilisi.
“If slippers with our logo are sold at the Dry Bridge, it means that someone has still taken them from our hotel,” says Elene Baratashvili, PR manager of the Marriott Tbilisi hotel and the Court Yard Marriott hotel.
There are no official records at the Marriott hotel of stealing. Although, as the slippers are well-made and of good quality, it might seem attractive for some guests to steal them believes Baratashvili.
Towels, coat hangers, slippers, sheets, hygiene products and bath mats are fairly common targets for light-fingered visitors. Guests are attracted to the appealing items with 5 star logos. However stealing is not a problem concerning small hotels as it was believed. It can in fact be beneficial for the hotels, some authors believe.
Apparently, hotel guests steal up to 100 million USD a year worth of hotel goods, according to the American Hotel & Lodging Association.
“Bath items with the logo of Georgian Palace Hotel (GPH), slippers and small towers are the most frequently stolen items from our hotel,” Lela Tsulukidze, Deputy Director of GPH, a premium hotel located on Black Sea coast of Adjara.
“Such occurrences do happen but are not very frequent”, she says.
The hotel cannot name exactly the amount of the monetary loss due to stolen items.
“I don’t remember any incidences of the theft of large, luxury items. The cost of a 40 ml shampoo bottle is 0.45 USD,” she added.
An air conditioner remote has been the biggest item stolen from the Hotel River Side. Its cost was 70 GEL.
“Towels, ash-trays, clothes hangers and bottle openers are the most frequently lost items in River Side,” Yana Chokheli, Executive Manager of River Side said. “Fortunately, such occurences are decreasing in frequency.”
Some hotels including the Radisson Blu Iveria Hotel and the Ambasador Hotel claim that they haven’t detected any thefts of items from the hotel.
“We don’t have such cases of stealing in our hotel,” Natalia Luchaninova, Cluster PR & Marketing Manager of Radisson Blu Iveria Hotel said. “The customer profile that we are receiving on a daily basis consists of mainly business people and so far we haven’t experienced many cases of stealing. It is quite common when guests take the half used bathroom amenities such as shampoo, shower gel and hand cream, however we cannot consider this as stealing. And in some ways it is environmentally friendly as we would otherwise throw them out.”
Thea Tskhvitava, manager of Hotel Ambasadori said that neither Georgians nor foreigners have stolen anything in the hotel.
Nino Isakadze, PR Manager of the hotels Batumi Sheraton and Sheraton Metechi Palace don’t deny that occurences of stealing happen but she said that such information is confidential.
Representatives of Georgian hotels can’t identify who the thieves of the hotel items are. According to Tsulukidze, it’s difficult to blame only Georgians or only foreigners. While Chokheli said that mostly foreigners steal items from the River Side hotel.
“Mainly middle-aged people tend to steal at GPH,” Tsulukidze said.
According to Chokheli all ages and types of people take items from the River Side hotel.
In spite of the fact that most Georgian hotels prefer not to talk about stolen items, this problem is faced in hotels world-wide.
The British newspaper The Telegraph names the items mainly stolen from hotels in one of its articles including coat hangers, alarm clocks, slippers, sheets and bath mats. Lots of international tourism agencies and web-pages about hotels have published similar articles.
Maia Gaurchava told The FINANCIAL that she has experienced lots of cases of stolen items from hotels in Turkey.
“We had an info-tour and changed hotels every two days,” she said. “I was shocked. Everyone from our group took slippers and some other items from every hotel. Asking why they needed so many slippers, they answered that they were presents for relatives and friends. I even didn’t use those slippers as they were of a low quality.”
Preventing small items from being stolen from hotels is quite tough.
“The only thing we can do is a detailed check-out process,” Tsulukidze said. “Our staff checks the room to ensure nothing is missing and to check no equipment in the room has been damaged.”
“The check-out process isn’t enough for the prevention of theft,” Chokheli said. “But unfortunately we don’t have any other security measures. Such items are small and easily transported.”
Tourism is developing in Georgia at a high speed and most of the hotels are completely occupied currently. There are about 220 hotels all around Georgia.
"I stole a laundry bag from the Alvear Palace Hotel in Buenos Aires", wrote Lynn Yaeger, author of the CNN Travel Blog. "It was made of thick ivory linen, embroidered with the words "dry cleaning" in cerulean blue, and looked like something that I could have found at an antique textiles show. But that wasn't the case".
The author believes that the theft of branded amenities can be beneficial for hotels. "Every time you use an item that bears the hotel's name you'll remember what a wonderful time you had there and plan another visit (and not just to take more stuff)".
At the supercool Chic & Basic budget hotels in Amsterdam and Barcelona, the owners even anticipate guests' illicit impulses: their toiletries read, "This is the cutest soap that you will steal from a hotel. Enjoy it." and "Amazing quality shower gel rarely found as hotel amenity." Travel + Leisure slideshow: Amenities to snatch or splurge on.
François Delahaye, general manager of Paris's Hôtel Plaza Athénée, confirms that the shampoo, shower gel, slippers, and even ashtrays are good to go. Delahaye says anything with the hotel's logo is extra-desirable.
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