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Hotel Tracks Towels With RFID Chips
nonprofiteer writes "An unnamed hotel is now putting RFID tags in their towels: 'The Honolulu hotel (the hotels have asked to remain anonymous, just to keep you guessing) says it was taking a bath to the tune of 4,000 pool towels per month, a number that it has reduced to just 750 (a savings of $16,000 per month). And that's just at the pool.' It's unclear what they do if the towel flies to the Midwest."
My Uncle, and his family own a dry cleaning business in north Carolina and they have been doing this for years. It has caused the dry cleaners to make more money, as well as their clients. Plus as everything comes into the plant, it gets sorted so easily. You can run a cart through a scanner, and the computer reads everything in the cart, telling it where to go, and it is tracked from start to finish. The best part is, the cleaners and their customers make the agreements on the items that are supposed to be cleaned, not the actual pieces being cleaned, so they can tell the hospital who didn't turn in their shirts that week, yet collect for cleaning them. It is the future of dry cleaners.
How easy it it to locate and destroy one of these new RFID-enabled towels? Do these towels retain their usefulness when hitchhiking?
take a towel from the maid's cart. It isn't registered to anyone and they are always sitting there in the hallway unattended.
What happens when an RFID chip meets a microwave?
The Hilton Hawaiian Village. Signs all over the place that the towels are tracked and you will be charged if it is not returned.
I often pop my towel in the microwave for a few seconds to make it nice and toasty. I wonder if I've ever nuked me any chips?
this story is about 2 months old. The RFID triggers a sensor and then you may be asked to take the towel out of your luggage, or be billed for a towel. This type of news could also be a hoax and people read the sign and don't take the chance. Theft is theft, it shouldn't happen.
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I wouldn't be surprised if they just bill the card associated with the room.
This is a classic, 100%-nails example of a "wish I thought of that" idea.
I have been in hotels all over the planet. Average to luxury, Asia, Europe and the US. One thing nearly all of them have in common (including high end Hawaii hotels) is that the towels are a joke. Small, thin, low cost junk. Why are people stealing that crap?
That's what I can't wrap my mind around (no pun intended). Even the most plush hotel towels are laundered and reused by guests, and the vast majority of hotel towels aren't really that high quality to begin with. Is the economy so bad that people are resorting (again, no pun intended) to taking used hotel towels instead of buying their own for a few bucks?
Despite the use of what must be copious amounts of chlorine and near-autoclave cleaning, just imagine what some people leave on those towels. You still want them?
They've got to work that into an episode of Raising Hope.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
20 comments, and the tin foil hats still haven't come out... what's up, Slashdot?
This article is two weeks old, and RFID tagging in hotels has been known in the industry since 2009. Wakey wakey people!
All they'd have to do is incorporate the rfid detector with popup tire slashers, iron crossing barriers, klaxons and klieg lights. Locals could sit in lawn chairs across the street at checkout time and watch the show.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Next step is to GPS the towels. When this happens my grandmother is screwed!
It's Hilton's Hawaiian Village. Just spent a week there with the fambly. Inside the beach towel return bins, you can clearly see what looks to be a RFID reader wand/antenna along with other assorted electronics.
That's the only way you could enforce this, when they try to walk out the door they set off an alarm and some poor dumb slob has to embarrass the hell out of a guest. OTHO, it'll get around pretty fast and it won't go over well. $16k isn't much money for a hotel you know. Just let it go.
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As SomePgmr said, they might just automatically bill you for it as walk out the door of the hotel. It would be interesting how many people will either contest the charge (knowingly they stole it in the first place), or just eat the cost because shipping it back would be just as costly for the refund. The idea being that the hotel can reduce the loss of revenue due to theft without causing a scene about it.
Life is not for the lazy.
The next thing you know they'll be releasing a towel with an embedded electronic thumb... the future is now.
Why not sell seats to the locals?
RFID tracking arrows and crossbows. If you make it by that, you win a towel.
Fight Spammers!
That hotel's a frood that really knows where their towels are.
You wander through the Honolulu airport, landside, with a plastic wand that has a button that will make the thing beep if you push it. "I'm from the hotel loss detection department and I noticed you have one of our towels in your bag (beep). If you would like to keep the towel that will be $50 or I can call someone from the TSA to have you arrested." The guilty people will hand you $50.
If the hotel sincerely thinks that implementing RFID tracking is good for its business, then why the request to stay anonymous?
Coward.
I see a new demand for Faraday luggage!
notice it was specifically *pool* towels. i have to wonder if they were just counting towels removed from the pool area as losses. what i've often done is take a pool towel back to my room and leave it there for the maid to whisk away with the bath towels.
possibly they weren't actually losing that many pool towels from the premises overall, they were just being diverted to the wrong pile. if they need RFID to tell a pool towel from a bath towel, i would suggest color coding or size/weight differences instead.
But how much did it cost to implement this plan in the first place?
Heroscape, it's like legos combined with anachronistic wargames.
"There's a frood who really knows where his towel is."
Ah, yes, the "Souvenir" towel, for $18.95
Am I the only one shocked that they are paying over $4.90 per towel? I would think hotels could get a better rate than that...
Get a web developer
Have gnu, will travel.
No. You call it the "if you like our towels, take one"-policy and bill it to the credit card.
-Or you tell your guest: "We have this a special offer this week only, for only $1 you can upgrade to a brand new towel."
Tech (most tech) is not inherently evil or good. This is the kind of stuff RFID tags should be used for, a private company in a closed system. Everyone knows you use towels at a hotel, it's just simple normal inventory control, You aren't taking the towels out of the hotel, whats the problem again?
New griefing experiment:
Sit in the hotel lobby and spoof an RFID every time someone walks near the door.
As a bonus, I'd like to spoof 10,000 of them at once when I check out, just to see the reaction.
Whatch'you talking about?
Isn't taking a towel like taking an embossed pen, using the stationery, taking the rest of a bottle of soap? Sure the hotel would like you to leave it, (and to charge if they can), but it's a consumable. Some people even take them home as souvenirs!
I've stayed at a hotel that had a placard on the desk (paraphrasing):
Take whatever you like from this room! It will be billed to you automatically!
Towel $40 ...
Pillow $50
Alarm Clock $65
(I forget the exact prices, but I'm definitely within $10 of the correct numbers)
and NOT want their room towels there....
keep your room towels in your room
I'm thinking, shipping costs to the Island...
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Whether customers would put up with that is another issue. I suspect that business travelers who aren't paying for the room themselves wouldn't care. If they are constantly generating "Towel Deposit" expenses for their employers, maybe their employers would care.
Seriously, hotels charge you for missing towels... the full price!
Not only they don't care, but they actually make a profit out of it.
Tracking them? Seriously! As if anyone willing to "steal" a towel can't spoof the RFID chip...
pfff...
I remember one hotel I stayed in had quite a witty note in the room. Something along the lines of;
"Lot's of people seem to like our towels, so we've decided to make them available in the gift shop for $10. If you don't feel like walking all the way to the gift shop, you can simply take the towels from your room, and we'll just charge the $10 to your credit card."
Is 1563649 a prime number?
Aren't we missing the point here? Hasn't South Park taught us anything? The more intelligent we make towels, the more they'll just wander off and get high!