What Happens to The Stuff We Leave in Hotels
San Francisco Chronicle, January 25th, 2019
Jo Licata wasn’t sure what to do with the 6-foot-tall stuffed dinosaur in her office. The massive Barney doll had been left at the Hilton San Francisco Union Square last year, and it was Licata’s job to dispatch it. But who would take a giant stuffed animal on short notice?
Licata, the hotel’s community projects manager, immediately reached out to some of the more than 50 nonprofits the Hilton works with in the Bay Area on accepting donations. If the giant toy didn’t faze her, it’s because Licata has seen far stranger things left behind. Her office is nearly always filled with bags of guest clothing, assorted luggage and boxes of convention giveaways, from logo water bottles to clip-on tubes of hand sanitizer. Barney was just one of the literally thousands of items — from phone chargers and suit jackets to diamond earrings and baby strollers — that are forgotten or abandoned every month by guests and conventioneers.
tems left at hotels run the gamut from the mundane to the exotic to the (ahem) unmentionable. Most of the items left behind at the Hilton and other San Francisco hotels don’t just sit around languishing in a lost-and-found pile or get tossed in the trash. Many go on to lead second lives if they aren’t claimed. Even random oddities such as sign boards, walkers, orphaned earrings, abandoned luggage, medical supplies — and yes, a giant stuffed dinosaur — are donated to organizations that can put them to good use.
What people leave
According to a 2015 survey released by G6 Hospitality, which owns lodging brands Motel 6 and Studio 6, 54 percent of 1,060 American travelers surveyed said they had left something behind in a hotel room at some point in their lives. The survey found that 29 percent are more likely to accidentally leave a belonging behind in a hotel room than take a hotel item — like shampoo or soap — home with them. In addition, 35 percent of those surveyed have returned to a hotel to retrieve what they forgot.
By far, the most common items left behind in hotels are phone and electronics chargers. With 1,921 guest rooms and an additional 1,000 rooms at its Park 55 property, the Hilton Union Square alone collects about 250 chargers a month. The Fairmont San Francisco and the Palace in San Francisco also collect hundreds of chargers every month, which are held for a period of time before they are disposed of.
“I always tell people who have left their chargers at home to go to the concierge and ask for one,” Licata says. “But every six weeks, we have an e-waste company that comes and picks those items up.”
Clothing like hoodies and coats, business clothes, shoes, rain jackets, dresses and even more intimate items also are commonly left behind in hotel rooms, along with eyewear and jewelry. Other than the underwear, clothes, eyeglasses and other usable articles are usually donated to homeless shelters, women’s shelters, the Salvation Army and other nonprofits. Suitcases and strollers that people buy just for the trip and leave behind are given to programs that help single moms and homeless families.
“July and August are our big vacation months, but people who come here don’t always realize that these are not warm months,” Licata said. “They end up having to buy sweatshirts and hooded jackets because they were unprepared for the cold. Sometimes, they just leave those items behind.”
Even trade show and convention giveaways like T-shirts and caps find a new life at San Francisco nonprofits. Totes are especially in demand, Licata said.
“A lot of times, these conventions and trade shows don’t want to have to ship those leftover items back,” Licata said. “Totes are really popular. All the organizations want the totes.”
Orphaned earrings and other costume jewelry, leftover trade show signage and similar items are donated to Scrounging for Creative Repurposing of Art Products (SCRAP) or to nonprofit theater companies and schools.
Medical equipment abandoned after a medical trade show was a little harder to place, Licata said. She ended up finding a nonprofit that sends medical devices to developing countries.
All those little soaps guests unwrap and use only once or twice? Even those are repurposed.
“We harvest the scrap soap every three to four weeks and send it to Clean the World, which melts them down, sanitizes them and creates new soap that’s sent to developing countries and to disaster relief, like the areas recently hit by the hurricanes,” said Licata.
Where leftovers end up
Most San Francisco’s hotels follow protocol from the California Hotel and Lodging Association, which recommends that found items be turned in to the hotel’s lost-and-found department where they are logged and held for a period of time under the watchful eye of the hotel’s security officer.
“After 90 days, if we haven’t successfully reunited the item with its owner, the person who discovered the item gets first dibs on it,” Licata says. “After that, we donate the items to the community.”
Possessions are sent back to guests when requested.
“Call the hotel’s lost-and-found department as soon as possible. They will be happy to make arrangements to have items returned,” says Michelle Heston, regional director of public relations for Fairmont Hotels & Resorts. “By protocol, any found illegal items are immediately reported and surrendered to local authorities.”
Sometimes, hotels go above and beyond to return beloved items.
At the Palace Hotel, a little girl’s stuffed rabbit got mixed up with the bedding and sent off to laundry service during housekeeping. The girl was distraught.
“Our director of housekeeping went down to the laundry service, and they were able to find Rabby, but the family had already left to go home to Texas,” says Renée Roberts of Renée Roberts Marketing & Public Relations, representing San Francisco’s Palace Hotel. “So we took pictures of Rabby by the pool, Rabby having a tea party, Rabby hanging out with the chef and riding in an expensive automobile and sent those pictures to the family so they knew we were taking good care of Rabby.”
Housekeeping created a duvet for Rabby to sleep on in the return package and included the photo album of Rabby’s adventure for the family when the toy was returned.
“It was a cute little thing to do, and it made the little girl happy,” Roberts says.
Not all items are easy to return, however. One of the oddest items the Palace has shipped to an owner was a set of tires left in a room and a full-length mink coat. The Fairmont San Francisco once found an artificial leg and a set of dentures.
“If it’s an item of any value, people will call to get them back. We find a lot of laptops, electronic devices, jewelry and items that people want to claim,” Roberts says.
Items of a more racy, romantic nature are also kept, in case the owners want them back. “Depending on the item, some are discarded after a defined period of time if no one claims it,” Heston says.
As for Barney, he, too, found a second calling: Hilton Union Square donated the massive stuffed dinosaur to Child Protective Services.
“We got a call about two sisters who were removed from the home. The 3-year-old was inconsolable, but when she walked into the children’s waiting area, she saw Barney and just ran and threw herself on him, clinging to him for comfort,” Licata says. “That brought tears to my eyes when I heard that.”