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Take Hotel Soap But Leave Fireplace

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<i> Greenberg is a Los Angeles free-lance writer</i>

What’s your best memory of a favorite hotel? Great service? A room with a terrific view? A romantic meal?

Or is it that ashtray you pocketed, the extra bath towel or bathrobe you took with you, the extra bars of soap or those slippers that somehow found their way into your suitcase.

Chances are reasonably good that if you’ve stayed at a hotel you’ve taken away more than just your bill when you left.

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Nothing Is Safe

There’s a very good reason why most hotel room TV sets are bolted to the wall; there’s an equally good reason why hotel room bedboards, paintings, lamps and even soap dishes are fastened tight. “People will steal just about anything not secured,” says one hotel manager. “And I mean anything.”

The fact that many guests steal articles from the hotels where they are staying is not exactly a news bulletin.

But what they are stealing these days might surprise you.

Would you believe . . . hotel telephones, entire room carpets, bathroom fixtures and marble fireplaces are just some of the items that have all been lifted by guests.

Giveaway Ashtrays

“Losing things like ashtrays comes with the territory,” says Patrick Board, general manager of the Mayfair Hotel in London. “We look at our ashtrays almost as hotel giveaways now.” (The Mayfair replaces 8,000 ashtrays a year.) “Still,” he says “so much of a hotel is on the honor system it’s actually quite amazing that more things aren’t taken.”

But more things are being taken. When the Inter-Continental London opened in June, 1975, management fully expected certain items to vanish. Indeed, dozens of ashtrays, towels and bathrobes checked out of the hotel with guests.

“But we were clearly surprised,” says spokeswoman Mary Gunther, “when we discovered that a guest had checked out not only with his luggage but had also taken his bathroom door.”

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Then there was the case of the missing Egyptian bidet faucets. At the Ramses Hilton in Cairo, general manager Ahmed el Nahas investigated. The guest thief turned out to be a Japanese bathroom accessory manufacturer.

Beware the Tool Kit

Far more puzzling are missing door signs from the Sheraton St. Louis. “These are bolted to the doors,” says spokeswoman Deirdre Sullivan, “but the guests keep taking them as souvenirs. We can only assume that our guests travel with tool boxes.”

In Malta the headboards in most of the rooms at the Hilton contain eight-pointed Maltese crosses. General Manager Anthony de Piro keeps an extra stock on hand--many guests have filed off the crosses and taken them.

In Dubai, United Arab Emirates, a hotel guest who had been staying there until he could move into a more permanent residence invited the manager to dinner at his new apartment. “The minute I walked in I saw it,” says the manager. “The hotel had furnished his entire apartment--china, glasses, silverware, paintings and even seat cushions. I was too dumbstruck to say anything at dinner.”

Thwarted Thefts

Sometimes, when a hotel adds an item to a guest room it fully expects it to disappear. When the Inter-Continental in New York added giant bath sheets to guest bathrooms, the hotel prepared for a mass exodus of the large towels. “It never happened,” says a spokesman. “The towels were so large that people just couldn’t get them into their suitcases. However, we did lose an awful lot of expensive washcloths.”

Bathrobes still lead the disappearance lists. “I’m convinced,” says Robert Zimmer, president of Rosewood Hotels (owner and operator of the Bel Air, the Remington, the Mansion on Turtle Creek and the new Crescent Court hotel in Dallas), “that there are professional bathrobe collectors who must keep secret closets to display their booty. The minute we put our logo on the robes, they walked,” he says.

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Rosewood Hotels has no monopoly on bathrobe losses. One of the more popular theft items at the Savoy Hotel in London is the hotel bathrobe, monogrammed with the Savoy logo. When the losses were first noticed, the hotel charged guests 35 to buy a robe, but it didn’t stop the robes from walking.

Buy, Don’t Steal

“Now,” says Savoy spokeswoman Judith Dagworthy, “we offer to monogram the robes with the guest’s initials for an additional 5. As a result, very few robes are stolen, and guests leave with a personalized memento of their stay with us.”

The robe sales are only the beginning. Through its gift shop the Savoy now also sells its chinaware, silver peppermills, tea strainers and condiment sets, as well as butter dishes, all items that used to disappear in great numbers.

Still, the distinctive pink Wedgwood ashtrays at the Savoy disappear with such regularity that the hotel keeps a standing order with the china maker.

“It’s not that some travelers are kleptomaniacs,” says a Mayfair spokesman. “It’s just that when they’re paying high prices for their hotel accommodations they somehow feel it’s their right to do it.”

Rugs and Washbowls

Nevertheless, some guests will take just about anything. At the Beverly Wilshire Hotel some guests stopped just short of taking the bathroom washbowl.

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“We’ve had expensive paintings stolen from guest rooms,” says Beverly Wilshire spokeswoman Helen Chaplin. “What’s worse,” she says, “is what happened to all of our Oriental scatter rugs we put on guest room floors. They disappeared. So we replaced them and had them sewn to the floor. They disappeared again.

“It’s very difficult to stop the thefts,” she says. “By the time housekeeping or security discovers something is missing, the guest has already gone.”

Sometimes the hotel unwittingly helps in a theft. When a Beverly Wilshire bellman arrived at a suite to help a guest check out, the man was waiting with his suitcases--and the room’s marble fireplace that he had just cut and chiseled out of the wall.

“Just taking it to get it repaired,” said the guest nonchalantly. The bellman helped him take the fireplace out of the hotel. The guest and the fireplace were never seen again.

Silver Saved

Every once in a while a hotel gets lucky. A guest staying at the Cavalieri Hilton in Rome ordered all his meals through room service, and ordered the food according to the cutlery he needed. When he put together a complete service for eight, he checked out.

But the hotel had been keeping track of the missing silverware, and all of it was discreetly removed from his luggage before he left the hotel.

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When the staff at the Beverly Wilshire noticed a sterling silver coffee pot missing from the room of a guest who had just left to check out, they notified the manager, who raced downstairs to intercept him. “We’re so pleased you like the pot,” he told the startled guest. “And because you’re a regular with us, instead of just charging you our cost of $150 for it, we’ll only charge you $75.”

The man reached deep into his luggage, retrieved the pot and slammed it down on the check-out counter. “Not worth it,” he said, and stalked out.

Cry of Conscience

Every once in a while, stolen hotel goodies return after the fact. Not long ago Andre Charriere, the manager of the Hilton in Abidjan, received a large, unexpected package from the United States. When security officers opened the box they found a tremendous amount of the hotel’s own silverware.

An accompanying letter explained that the guest had accumulated the utensils during many stays, had felt guilty and thus was forking over the large quantity of spoons, knives, and yes, forks. He begged the Ivory Coast Hilton to “grant its forgiveness and thus cleanse my soul.”

Charriere wrote to the guest, hoping that his act would “instill the same spirit in all who deprive the hotel of our operating equipment.”

Some hotels post signs in guest rooms noting that equipment is inventoried after each use. A big hint. And there’s nothing to keep a hotel from billing a guest who takes the kitchen sink or marble mantel, except leaning over backward to get repeat business, perhaps too far.

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