I love this example of how technology is helping hotels cut their operating costs by catching the guests (and possibly staff too) who help themselves to the contents of their hotel rooms.

Is it theft to take a couple of shampoo bottles, soaps or tea bags from your hotel room? Of course not - since their are provided as a consumable part of your stay. But slipping the hotel bath robe into your suitcase or spiriting away a couple of pillows is undoubtedly on the wrong side of the law. And this kind of activity adds significant costs for a hotel. The Economist article quotes a source as claiming that “in any given month, [hotels] can lose 5 to 20 percent of towels, sheets and robes”.

The technology being used to counteract this cost is RFID, which we’ve mentioned before on the Business Studies blog.. Its all very simple. The RFID tag is sewn into the garment and it tracks the bath-robe’s or towel’s journey!