Lost and Found
We’ve all been there. It’s a race against the clock. Checkout time is 11 a.m. and you haven’t even brushed your teeth or packed your bag. It’s no wonder nearly half of Canadians admit to having left something behind in a hotel room.
A recent Choice Hotels Canada survey reveals that men are more likely to forget their belongings than women and if you add children to the mix 50% of parents have done it. It’s the little, yet most important items we most commonly forget – toothbrushes, phone chargers and sunglasses.
Choice Hotels Canada found that 43% of Canadian travellers have forgotten personal belongings with Albertans being the most forgetful of all, at 51%, while only 32% of Quebecers have done the same.
“It’s easy to forget items in your hotel room,” said Julie Chan-McConnell, director, Marketing and Loyalty at Choice Hotels Canada. “If it’s important or valuable, our hotel staff do everything they can to return the belonging to its owner, but more often people leave minor items behind like toothbrushes. If you check into one of our hotels and are missing a toothbrush or other small personal items, the front desk will be happy to help find or source a replacement.”
It turns out toothbrushes are the most common belonging travellers forget in hotel rooms (18%), with the next most common thing being phone chargers (15%).
So what else are people forgetting? The following are the most common personal belongings people reported as lost during a recent hotel stay: sunglasses (14%); books (10%); hats (9%); makeup (8%); shoes (7%); toys (7%); prescription glasses (6%); goggles (2%); and wallets (2%).
Women probably won’t be surprised to learn that men are more likely to report they’ve forgotten personal belongings in hotel rooms. While only 38% of women say they’ve left items behind while travelling, 48% of men say they have done so. People with children have a higher than average chance of leaving items behind in hotels, with 50% saying they’ve done so.
They say people become more forgetful as they age, but that obviously doesn’t include leaving belongings behind in hotel rooms; older respondents were a lot less likely to do so than younger ones. Only 32% of travellers over 65 years old say they have left personal belongings in their hotel rooms while a substantial 56% of those under 34 have done so.
