The wild world of hotel lost property

A pet lizard. A rice cooker. A $6.1 million watch. A Hermès Birkin bag. These are just a few of the things found by housekeeping staff in the world’s hotels after guests have checked out, over the past year. And while the most commonly found items are unsurprising—clothes, phone chargers and adapters loom large—the sheer volume and strangeness of lost property uncovered by Hotels.com’s annual Hotel Room Innsights Report suggests that, as travelers, we could really do with some assistance when it comes to checking out successfully.  

Over a third of hotels surveyed say that guests leave behind items in their rooms on at least 25% of their stays. And while some items suggest extreme forgetfulness (how else to explain leaving behind your own dentures?), others suggest some extremely strange hotel habits (special mention to whoever left their own vacuum cleaner behind at a business hotel on the outskirts of Monterey). 

While we’ve all forgotten things in hotels, these lapses in memory are not a foregone part of the checkout experience. Realizing that a bad checkout can ruin a perfect trip, hotels and experts are coming up with new strategies to ensure that you never leave your hotel without everything you came with—and to help make 2025 the year you finally stop buying new phone chargers. 

Book a reminder call 

Several hotels in our survey, including Hotel Place d’Armes in Montreal, allow guests to pre-order a reminder call. A memory-jogging version of the wake-up call, simply let the hotel know your key items and they’ll remind you to pack them on the morning you leave.

While this might sound overly cautious, there’s a neurological reason why you’re more likely to forget things in a hotel: “Our memories are tied to particular contexts,” says Professor Charan Ranganath of UC Davis, author of Why We Remember. “A vacation is relaxing because it pulls you out of your routine and stimulates your curiosity. But it can make you a little less likely to follow your good habits, like exercise—or remembering your wallet.” 

Work to a checklist  

Hotels like Villa Eyrie Resort in Mill Bay, Canada, offer a checklist service, with key items to be reviewed on departure. For Professor Ranganath, this is a way of jump-starting an essential memory process. “The ability to remember to do something in the future is called ‘prospective memory’ and requires you to plan for the future, and then have a cue come up at just the right time to remind you,” he explains.

“Prospective memory is really hard, and it gets even harder as we get older or when we are under stress, so if you realize you only have 15 minutes to get to the airport and your driver just canceled, your prefrontal cortex will be shut down, making it very difficult to think about the fact that you are likely to leave something behind.” This can happen to anyone, so use a written list (or checklist service) as a backup. 

Call in the pros

Guests who would never have any problem packing their own suitcases at home can call on the personal packing services and concierge room-sweep offered by hotels like Montreal’s Hotel Birks. 

Emilie Russell, General Manager of central London’s art-filled rock ’n’ roll hotel, Chateau Denmark, suggests that switching off during a hotel break can lead many of us to forget the basics. “I think it’s a sense of freedom that comes with staying in a great hotel,” she says. “In a way, you don’t need to be so cautious, because you’re in a safe place where everyone will look after you.”  

Trick your brain

The humble shoe could be your secret weapon against hotel forgetfulness. A recent TikTok by a flight attendant suggested that valuables be left inside a rogue shoe in a safe, positing the theory that while you’re likely to walk out without your phone charger, it’s unlikely you’d leave a single shoe behind.

Professor Ranganath suggests that locking in a pre-planned routine—even a completely artificial one like the shoe/safe trick—will help to trigger your memory. “Put yourself in that mindset and then run through a mental checklist of all the things that you need to grab,” he says. “And then imagine yourself packing or taking each of those things one by one. The mental simulation will help you remember things when it comes time to check out.” 

Rally the retrieval services

“If you forget something, we get it back to you exactly how you ask us to,” says Russell. And other hotels in our survey have been going the extra mile—or in the case of Hotel Victoria Ejecutivo in Guadalajara, the extra 13 miles, as a staff member was dispatched by motorcycle to personally return a passport and other documents to a guest. JOAI Paraíso by Iberostar was similarly hands-on, couriering a set of business keys 5,000 miles.

So if the worst does happen, don’t be afraid to lean on your hotel even though you’re no longer a guest. “When unexpected things happen, it’s about what you do as innkeepers that sets you apart,” says Russell. Amen to that.