Hotels go high-tech to stop towel thieves

[renovation]

Those big hotel towels are so soft, so absorbent -- they're like Bounty on steroids. No wonder you're tempted to take one home when you check out.

facing higher replacement costs as cotton prices rise, have turned to RFID chips to track the theft of linens.
Be forewarned that when you and your pilfered towel walk out the lobby door, an alarm may go off somewhere.
At least three U.S. hotels are using radio frequency identification chips sewn into the fabric to track their towels, bathrobes and sheets.
One reason is better management of inventory. But there's also the human factor: Hotel guests steal a lot of towels.

According to a 2004 survey by Orbitz, 18% of hotel guests admitted taking towels. Only 2% took bathrobes or bathmats. (Bathmats?)

Replacing these items has gotten much more expensive because the price of cotton has jumped 150% since August. It's so high that clothing manufacturers are incorporating more synthetics into fabric, raising prices -- look for increases of 10% to 20% for cotton apparel this year -- or using less of it.

http://money.msn.com/shopping-deals/article.aspx?post=7c277dfc-160d-4581-850c-cc2456b6fa28&GT1=33006

[normalicy]

Maybe it's just me, but I prefer my own towels.

[EvilHorace]

When I was a kid, hotels like Holliday Inn had cool towels that were collectable but now, they're just plain white and nothing worth taking. Not only that but they have your card # so if they notice anything missing, they can easily charge you.

[Cheap]

i have a rare take on the issue. i'm a competitive swimmer of over 20 years. big meets are 3-4 days long with sessions in the morning (preliminaries) and at night (finals). it's not uncommon to be drying off 10-20 different times per day (warming up, racing, warming down, racing again, etc) and dry towels are better than wet ones

no one wants to haul around a lot of clothes when flying to different cities, so i don't like to travel with more than two towels. i use hotel towels to the max! so if the beeper went off as i walked out the front door they would be confused when i explain it to them that the towel would be coming back...well, usually . between business, vacation, and swimming trips i've probably been to 100 hotels in the last 10 years and i have only 7 or 8 plain white hotel towels.

if you ask a cleaning lady in a hallway for more towels, they just give them to you and don't care about inventory.