Weird Things People Try Stealing From Hotel Rooms

A roll of toilet paper, a few extra packets of instant coffee, a bottle of travel-sized shampoo — most people have swiped a small item here or there during a hotel stay. And as it turns out, packing away a few freebies before check-out isn't always a bad thing. Some items, such as lotion and disposable slippers, are totally part of what you can take from your hotel room, and most accommodations don't reuse these goods over multiple stays. In other words, you might as well snag them, or the housekeepers will throw them in the trash.

If sticky-fingered guests steal more than just basic toiletries and paper goods, though, they might wind up with a hefty charge added to their bill. However, that doesn't stop some from trying. Case in point: a stolen piano in Italy. According to a 2023 study of hotel theft by Wellness Heaven, three men in overalls waltzed into a hotel in the European country and made off with the grand piano from its lobby. Surprisingly, that isn't the strangest act of larceny in a hotel.

Stealing bedding might not seem as bizarre as hijacking toilet seats and bathtubs, but it's still a no-no in most hotels' books. "Hotels do care about [pillows]," clinical professor Bjorn Hanson of the New York University Tisch Center for Hospitality and Tourism shared with Yahoo! Travel. "If a guest takes pillows, about half the time the hotel will send a letter saying, 'We hope you're enjoying the pillows — here's the invoice.'" Similarly, blankets are off-limits, though some greedy guests snatch them anyway. In fact, Wellness Heaven's study discovered that 18% of hotels had experienced theft of blankets.

The survey also discovered that guests sometimes grab mattresses on their way out the door, with 5-star hotels (which, presumably, have the comfiest and most expensive mattresses) being the most affected. If you're wondering how someone could get away with such obvious theft, a British hotel chain hired private investigators to "steal" mattresses from its rooms without getting caught. The faux thieves were found to be successful in dragging a mattress down a hallway, into an elevator, and out the door within 20 minutes.

Electronics, from home appliances to smartphones, are one category of products commonly targeted by thieves, according to a 2022 report [PDF] by the National Retail Federation. With that said, these goods aren't always pinched from tech shops and big-box stores. In some cases, swindlers book private hotel rooms to snatch pricey electronics.

In the study by Wellness Heaven, tablet computers were found to have been stolen from nearly one in five hotels. Small appliances such as coffee makers, hair dryers, and phones were also commonly taken by mischievous guests. Even large electronics have been moved out of hotel rooms: Nearly 9% of hotels in the survey reported a stolen TV set, and just over 3% had a mini fridge stolen. Sarah Dandashy, a concierge and the blogger behind Ask A Concierge, also recounted when someone came into her hotel's business center and managed to leave with a computer. The thief entered with an empty suitcase, fit the device in the luggage, and left undetected.