Hotel thief

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A hotel thief is someone who steals items from the rooms of guests at a hotel.

Several factors may attract a thief to a hotel. Rooms are generally empty for most of the day, with few hiding places for valuable possessions outside of a hotel's safe, which not all guests make use of.[1] Furthermore, it is comparatively easy for a thief to leave a hotel without arousing suspicion, as guests are continually coming and going with luggage.[1]

Although hotel room security has improved, with more advanced locks, this has not eradicated hotel theft. A thief can enter a room without needing to pick a lock, for example by pretending to be a guest who has left their key in their room.[2] Items can also be taken while a guest is distracted, for example when checking in.[1]

One of the most prolific hotel thieves was , who stole thousands of dollars' worth of jewels from hotels in New York City in the early part of the twentieth century, including taking $8000 worth from a room at the .[3] Another nineteenth-century hotel thief successfully stole $60,000 worth of gold dust from a San Francisco hotel.[1]

Hotel guests can be considered as hotel thieves as well. CNN[4] reported on a survey of 1,157 four- and five-star hoteliers,[5] which items are stolen the most by guests. An astonishing 49 hotels reported that mattresses had been stolen from their premises.

References[]

  1. ^ a b c d Sandoval-Strausz, A. K. (2007). Hotel: An American History. Yale University Press. pp. 213–215.
  2. ^ Jones, Thomas J. A. (2007). Professional Management of Housekeeping Operations. John Wiley and Sons. pp. 320–321.
  3. ^ "St. Louis has man Sing Sing wants" (PDF). The New York Times. 4 January 1917. Retrieved 21 April 2011.
  4. ^ "Mattresses, coffee machines and a stuffed boar's head -- the surprising things stolen from luxury hotels". CNN. 9 December 2019. Retrieved 23 January 2020.
  5. ^ "Study: Theft in Hotels – Which items are stolen the most?". 3 December 2019. Retrieved 23 January 2020.
Retrieved from ""