To take the body lotion and soap from a £250 a night hotel? They have asked for it back!!!

[mum2sons]

DH and I spent our wedding anniversary in a v expensive boutique hotel. I took the body lotion and soap home as I usually would do (sad, but I get v excited about these things!)Yesterday we received a letter from the hotel asking for us to send the 2 items back for the future enjoyment of guests!!! Talk about humiliation! Looking forward to MNetters views

One of the reasons that it is so embaressing is that I did genuinely think that they were included.That may seem a bit thick to regular frequenters of posh hotels If I was your run of the mill thieving bstard then I would be feeling no shame and probably would nt have started this thread!!

i've got to say a bit of a to that, i'm afraid...

It is NOT stealing to take toiletries. 99.9% of hotels give them to you are part of your room. THey are yours to take. If a hotel decides to do things differently, it should make this very, very clear to customers. Not harass them after the event.

ethics of donating hotel toiletries
updated wed 16 mar 05
clifton wood on mon 14 mar 05

Hi, Claybuds.

Wes Rolley raised the question of ethics in taking toiletries from your
hotel room and donating them.

It's a great question, and one that Sample Soap spent time gathering the
answer to.

Not just because we wanted to do the right thing, but also because
Sample Soap started in a corporation that has most of the major hotel
chains as customers. And we wanted to be sure that we weren't acting
against their best interests. ;-)

So - we contacted the major chains. And every one of them told us the
same thing:

• when you rent the room, you buy the toiletries. you, as the

customer, can do with them as you please

• most upscale hotels don't have safety seals on their bottled

toiletries; just like bread left in the basket on a restaurant table, many unused toiletries are discarded

• the hotel chains applaud our efforts and even help with alerting

conference attendees about our project

It is like the pens, headed paper and fruit. They are YOURS!

"Our guests appreciate the high quality and that?s why they love brands like these," says Danyza Contreras, public relations manager at Villa San Michele. "They?re always taking the Bvlgari body lotion home with them." But the market is also getting increasingly keen, she adds, with fashion houses such as Armani now entering the sector.

but to be fair to strattons they are distancing themselves from that wanton extravagance and laying claim to a green approach to toiletries, slow food etc as their usp

mine?!!

"permanent nice dispenser bottles"

there is no such thing as a permanent nice PLASTIC dispenser bottle

Gilchrist & Soane is not "posh". Loads of hotels have that. Love Malmaison - we take all their soap and keeps us going for ages!

I find it hard to believe that the letter was anything but some jobsworth's doing set out to embarrass mum2sons. I cannot imagine that the hotel have closed that room off and are now waiting for her to send back the much needed bottle and the soap. The only point of this letter was to humiliate and that is out of order!

The other thing here is that the hotel obviously has a policy of getting their chambermaids to snitch on guests who have pocketed the soap

it wasn't the chambermaid have you never heard of tracker technology?

a lot of hotels send the housekeeping staff to the room whilst you are checking out.

did you not know that?

new thread

Gilchrist and soames retail at about 14 pounds a bottle

Maybe there is yellow sticky tape outside the room with "crime scene do not enter" ledodgyeasteregg?!

Retail at £14? According to the hotel's email, they pay £17.50 for each 250ml bottle - surely they are not exaggerating?

here

isn't your response from an american website, aloha? i'm not sure it proves anything. like i say, it's not cool that they wrote, but i still think that unless you are directed to take them it's stealing. where does it end, this unwritten rule? the towels? bathrobes? fixtures and fittings?

sorry - with aitch on this one. it is theft if you take something out of a hotel room. using it there is fine. would you take the sheets, curtains, tv? why is it any different with shampoo?

Oh thank you, I couldn't find a website (apparently they are too posh to be found by google )

£14 there for a 300ml dispenser bottle of hand-and-body lotion.

£17.50 then??? (And as they are refillable they must buy the stuff in 5-gallon buckets so it would be even cheaper? Or are they saying the plastic dispenser bottles cost £17.50 empty?)

oops x-posted aitch.

Haven't read the whole thread, sorry, so perhaps not the only one that thinks that it's perfectly reasonable for the hotel to ask for these things back.

Although, mum2sons - some posts have alleged that the hotel sent a rude letter - was it actually rude?

They're lying then, to say it's £17.50 for 250ml.

oh there is NO WAY on earth it costs them that much... but i think you rather lose the moral high ground if you nicked them in the first place.