Hotels are the most popular vacation accommodation in the United States. To meet this demand, over 91,000 hotels and motels have 9 million rooms available for use every day of the year.
According to statista.com the occupancy rate of hotels in the US as of August 2022 was 67 percent.
Do the math. That comes to over 6.03 million rooms rented daily, or 2.2 billion rooms a year.
Guess what happens when people stay overnight in a hotel? Not that. When hotel guests check out, they often leave things behind.
The most common items left behind in hotel rooms include mobile phones, passports, clothing and underwear, toys, keys, chargers and jewelry.
This is easy to understand. After guests spend one or more days at a hotel — due to business, vacation, or just visiting family or friends — one’s mind is preoccupied with the next stop on their trip, perhaps getting home.
If you are like me, I make one final sweep of the room before checking out, looking for items we may have forgotten. Years ago, I left a baseball cap in the closet after attending a Missouri Ad Manager’s meeting in Branson.
As far as I know, that was the only item I left for housekeeping to discover in my 40-plus years of hotel stays.
Last week the New York Post ran a travel story listing bizarre items left behind in 2022 at Travelodge’s 580 hotels in the UK.
According to the article, one traveler booked a separate room for an oil painting of Queen Elizabeth II and then forgot it when they checked out.
Other items left behind at Travelodge included:
• Keys to a Sunseeker Hawk 38 Power Boat
• A Hóng Bāo (Chinese wedding envelope) containing 10,000 Chinese Yuan
• 500 grams of caviar
• A pair of Japanese Chin puppies — named J.Lo and Ben after Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck
• A pair of donkeys named Daisy and Duke
• A five-generation heirloom family cookbook
• A life-size cut-out of German pro football manager Jürgen Klopp
• A Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee doll
• A sleigh full of Christmas presents
• A 5-foot Chinese temple birdhouse
• A box of personalized Viennese snow globes
• A treasure chest full of Indian Mithai sweets
• An oxygen tank
• A pilot’s license
• A 4-foot light-up Earth
• A 50-year-old Paddington Bear
• £250,000 (about $298,206) worth of share certificates
• A barrister’s wig and gown
• A photo album detailing the life of Queen Elizabeth II, from princess to queen
• Framed wedding vows from 1946
• A Union Jack printed sari
• A suitcase full of Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee memorabilia
Travelodge spokeswoman Shakila Ahmed said, “When it comes to why so many of our customers forget their treasured items, it’s basically due to us all being time-poor, juggling multiple tasks and being in a hurry to get from A to B. In the rush, valuable possessions are easily forgotten.”
On Dec. 30, Connie and I traveled to Chillicothe, Mo., to attend the wedding of one of her great nieces’ wedding. After staying the night in a popular national chain hotel, I did my usual sweep of the room to ensure we didn’t leave anything behind.
That’s when my eye caught something that looked out of place in the closet. It was brown material about four-foot tall, barely visible, sitting behind the ironing board. Curiosity got the better of me, so I reached for it.
This was a first for me. I discovered an item that someone else had left behind. It was a soft-sided gun case with a rifle or shotgun inside — I didn’t open it.
You should have seen the eyes of the hotel staff at the front desk when I relayed my discovery. They were aghast and probably worried I was offended.
I laughed and told them this gave me a great story. I didn’t say the story would appear in three newspapers.
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Of course, if you leave something behind, contact the hotel immediately. Most properties will hold onto the lost items for a specific time before donating the unclaimed items to charity.
