“To Take or Not To Take” is a conundrum that I’m sure every traveller who has checked into a posh hotel room has faced and acted upon. Haven’t we all pinched the occasional pen, the comb and the bath-gel mini-bottles believing it to be a harmless act? The problem arises when many travellers don’t realise that crossing the line is the difference between enjoying that complimentary chocolate on the pillow and taking the pillow home.

Etiquette issues faced by hotels are also not just limited to hotel rooms. Getting drunk while flying, playing loud music on trains and planes, stuffing those extra cakes and croissants from the hotel buffet counter to take back to the room, and standing five feet away from the group tour guide at the monument while eavesdropping on his proprietary briefing — all of these fall under some of the common travel offences where travellers fail to draw the boundary between right and wrong.

Everyone does it?

I believe what drives this action is an unfair sense of entitlement that we all have when we pay a good price for an experience. We paid for the flights through our nose, for the expensive vacation and for the lovely hotel room. So why can't we take those little hand-towels or bathrobes back home with us? A friend confessed to me how he always carries home the blanket from his international flights because they are “cozy” and warm him up “while watching television” in the colder Delhi nights.

To understand this behaviour better, at ixigo, we did a study with travellers and hotel partners last year to see what are the commonly stolen items in a hotel room. We realised that more than half of the travellers admitted to stuffing their bag with at least one hotel amenity at the end of their stay. Around 38 percent of people owned up to taking face towels, bathrobes, pillows, blankets, irons, hairdryers, ashtrays and even the batteries from TV remotes! What is more surprising is that all of these revelations came from seasoned and rookie travellers alike.

Driven by these insights, ixigo saw an opportunity to inform travellers on the dos and don’ts of hotel etiquette through a video which we relaunched last week. Within a span of 24 hours, it went viral and was trending across 10 countries.

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