Forget toiletries and bathrobes - surprising items like mattresses are being stolen from luxury hotel rooms too
- A Germany-based luxury hotel guide just conducted a survey that found hotel guests are taking unconventional "souvenirs" from their hotel rooms.
- While common items like towels, bathrobes, pens, and toiletries find their way into departing guests' luggage most frequently, 1,157 luxury hotels in Europe reported that other items are regularly stolen too.
- Coffeemakers, television sets, works of art, and even mattresses are among the more extravagant clipped items.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
Some things are almost expected to go missing from hotel rooms, like tiny toiletries and branded pens. Others, like television sets and coffeemakers, are most certainly not.
Wellness Heaven, a Germany-based luxury hotel guide, surveyed 1,157 luxury hoteliers from four- and five-star hotels primarily located in Europe to establish what items hotel guests are taking home with them beyond mini shampoo bottles.
Some items are expected - nearly three-quarters of hotelier respondents said towels and bathrobes are most frequently taken from hotel rooms. But mattresses and artwork thefts were also reported by a surprisingly large number of hoteliers. According to the survey, 49 hotels reported having mattresses stolen. The survey found that those more expensive, big ticket items are most likely to be stolen in the middle of the night, and also more likely to be taken from five-star hotels than four-star hotels.
The CEO of Wellness Heaven, Tassilo Keilmann, told CNN that many instances of thievery go unreported by luxury hotels for a simple reason. "In a lot of cases, they don't report it to the police, because they don't want to be connected to crime," Keilmann said, even though it is relatively simple to determine which guest walked away with a mattress.
The survey also collected data on more unique one-off thefts that don't necessarily point to a larger trend. One hotelier in Austria, for example, reported the theft of pine wood sauna benches; another in the Maldives said their hotel is constantly ordering new floral arrangements to keep up with the disappearance rate.