Struth!

IS nothing safe: a complete marble fireplace like this one disappeared from a guest’s room at the Four Seasons Beverly Wilshire – where they’d filmed Pretty Woman.

IN his continuing search for the more weird, wacky and wondrous in the world of travel, David Ellis says guests no longer seem content just knocking-off their hotel’s toiletries.

A Starwood in the UK is still searching for a grand piano that three men dressed in overalls wheeled out of the hotel’s lobby in 2012, a complete marble fireplace disappeared from a room in California’s Four Seasons Beverly Wilshire Hotel (maybe because it featured in Pretty Woman?) and at a US Holiday Inn a couple booked a room next to the car-park… and then loaded their room’s queen bed, sofa, desk and TV into a rental truck left in the car-park.

In Asia a US$300,000 Andy Warhol painting was stolen from Hong Kong’s W Hotel lounge, a crystal chandelier from the Shangri-la in Hong Kong, and a complete mini-bar from a Parkroyal Kuala Lumpur guestroom.

As well as sheets, towels, clock radios and even Gideon Bibles, a hotel in London’s Mayfair had two marble busts of famous personages stolen one day and returned by cab the next, a long-time regular acquired an entire dinner service by ordering nightly room service at his London hotel and pinching an item or two each time, and another donned and walked out in a decorative suit of armour from his UK Best Western hotel’s lobby.

One couple in America took their room’s curtains, a bloke unscrewed the numbers off his door in a 5-star English hotel, and another nicked-off with the General Manager’s pet dog.
David Ellis, ellispr@bigpond.net.au