Holiday Inn gives light-fingered guests the chance to confess their sins
In what can only be described as an extremely cunning public relations exercise, the Holiday Inn hotel chain has declared a ‘towel amnesty’, giving guests the chance to “come clean'” over their light-fingered misdemeanours.
According to a report in The Independent, the hotel chain loses some 500,000 items a year to less-than-honest guests – and while it says it does not want the towels, bath robes or ashtrays back, it is giving guests the chance to confess to their crimes because it does not want them “living with guilt”.
Mark Snyder, of the hotel group, told the newspaper’s Washington correspondent Andrew Buncombe: “Everyone has a Holiday Inn story, and some of those stories involve our towels going home with guests. We’re not asking for them back. We don’t want people living with guilt so we are simply letting Americans know everything is forgiven.”
According to the newspaper, the group has since been gathering stories from guests who have been willing to “fess up”. One wrote: “I took my first and only Holiday Inn towel from the suite at the Holiday Inn Hotel in Monterrey, Mexico, where I spent my first honeymoon night. I took it as a memento. Along the way I have lost the girl – but I still have the towel!”
