We deliberately left phones and wallets behind in UK hotel rooms

It should be easy to get your lost property back from a hotel - after all, they have every guest’s contact details on file. 

Hotels also know exactly when you checked in and checked out, and which room you were in. 

But our undercover investigation finds that many properties couldn’t care less. 

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What happened when we left valuables in hotel rooms

We suspected that hotels aren’t doing enough to reunite guests with their lost items. 

So we deliberately left phones and wallets stuffed with cash in some of the UK’s biggest hotel chains: Premier Inn, Travelodge, Holiday Inn Express and Britannia.

For each iPhone, we activated Apple’s Find My Phone tracking system so we could check where they went and monitor the hotels efforts to locate them. We also hid an ultra thin tracker - resembling a bank card - in wallets, along with £30 in cash.

We checked into seven different hotels and put either a phone or wallet in an easy place for the cleaner to find. Then we waited for staff to call us about our missing items.

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The disappearing act at Britannia

It was hard enough to get the Britannia Hampstead Hotel to look for the iPhone left in our room. A receptionist agreed to check with housekeeping the first time I called. I heard nothing. 

‘Ring back after 2pm when the manager is here,’ I was told when I chased it up the next day. 

I did that - only to be transferred to housekeeping where the phone rang out. 

I called reception for the fourth time and spoke to a very bored-sounding member of staff who told me no phone had been found. 

That’s despite the tracker showing that the phone was at the hotel the whole time suggesting staff didn’t look very hard. 

In the meantime I received several emails from Britannia inviting me to ‘rate my stay’ and book another room - which only added to my frustration. 

Eventually the phone ran out of battery and we lost its location. To this day, we still haven’t got it back.

When we approached Britannia, a spokesperson told us: ‘We are disappointed to hear about this experience, which falls short of the standard of service we aim to provide our guests. We take all reports of lost property seriously and are reviewing the circumstances of this case, along with our internal lost property procedures, to ensure items are handled consistently and every reasonable effort is made to reunite guests with their belongings. We are committed to learning from this feedback and improving our processes to help prevent this happening again.’  

Fobbed off by Holiday Inn Express

Meanwhile, I rang the Holiday Inn Express Wandsworth twice and spoke to two different staff members, who said that the wallet we left could not be located. That’s despite our tracker showing it also had not left the premises.

It was only when we turned up at the hotel unannounced three days later that we discovered it had been sitting in the lost property box (with our cash) all along. 

The eye roll I received from the receptionist when I told her about my previous phone calls spoke volumes. It appeared that neither staff member had bothered to check the box before fobbing me off over the phone.

At the time of going to press, Holiday Inn Express had not responded to our request for comment.

Don’t expect a phone call

For all but one hotel, we had to call and report our item missing - even when our phone or wallet had already been handed into reception. Only one hotel proactively contacted us: the Travelodge in London Battersea.

Hotels also have different policies for returning lost property to guests. Travelodge London City agreed to post our iPhone free of charge - although a poorly-labelled parcel meant it was returned to sender before the hotel eventually posted it a second time. In contrast, Holiday Inn Express Greenwich asked for us to arrange a £10 courier. 

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Hotel guests not getting their lost property back

When we surveyed Which? members, 11% told us they’d mistakenly left something behind at a hotel in the last five years. The most commonly misplaced items were electronic devices (a phone, tablet or phone charger) followed by clothing, cosmetics and jewellery. 

Less than half (46%) told us that they successfully got their belongings back. 

One guest was told by a hotel in Manchester that her misplaced glasses could not be found. She explained: ‘Two weeks later I stayed there again and requested the same room. Lo and behold, my glasses were exactly where I said they would be - on the floor between the bed and the bedside table!’