British guests, in comparison, would appear far more reticent¹ - with less than half of those surveyed owning up to pinching hotel property, putting them 16th out of 28 nationalities and regions to feature.

 

The global poll of almost 5,000 travellers, conducted by Hotels.com, found that Singaporean and Spanish holidaymakers are also rather prone² to thievery, with seven in 10 taking items from their hotel. Germany, Ireland and Russia completed the top five.

 

At the other end of the scale, Colombians were found to be the least likely to take something - just 31 percent admitting to bagging hotel property. They were followed by travellers from Norway, South Korea, Hong Kong and Denmark.

 

The most common items taken by British travellers were stationary³ (20 percent admitted taking such items) and slippers⁴ (12 percent).

 

Toiletries were not included, a spokesperson said, as "everyone takes these". Indeed, the vast majority of hotels apparently⁵ expect guests to remove all the shampoo and shower gel.

 

As Jacob Tomsky, author of the best-selling Heads in Beds, a memoir⁶ of ten years spent in the hotel industry, explains: "No respectable hotelier is going to want to pry⁷ open your luggage and search for shampoo. We hope you take the amenities⁸. We want you to use them later and think of us."

 

Theft of other items is not acceptable, however. In Japan a few years ago, one hotel reportedly had a young couple arrested for running off with bathrobes and an ashtray⁹, while a woman in Nigeria was sentenced to three months in prison for stealing two towels from the Transcorp Hilton Abjua Hotel. In the vast majority of cases you would be unlikely to end up behind bars, but do the same and you can expect to be blacklisted by the hotel, or to find an extra charge on your credit card once when you get home.

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