Chapter 29 Eight Little Words That Foiled Souvenir Hunters
How a hotel stopped its guests’ practice of removing pictures from the walls of the rooms – and thus saved its profits. THIS IS A SHORT, simple story recently passed on to me by a former hotel man, who asked me not to mention his name. Knowing of our research into ways and means of making the contact between hotel employee and guest one of greater refinement, he thought this story would interest me. It seems that this Midwestern hotel man hit upon an idea to keep “art lovers” from packing the pictures on the walls of the rooms into their trunks and suitcases before leaving the hotel. People have a “souvenir complex” that prompts them to carry mementoes away with them, in memory of good times. These people are hard to deal with, and every hotel man worries about them. He knows he cannot come right out and say, “I believe one of our pictures is in your suitcase by mistake, madam.” This would be embarrassing to the person. Besides, she might spend many hundreds of dollars in the hotel every year, and what is a $2.50 wall picture compared to that money! It is the constant trouble of replacing the pictures that annoys many a hotel manager. It is a source of petty irritation. This problem has always remained unsolved – that is, until this Midwestern hotel man appeared in a store specializing in pictures for commercial use and ordered $11.00 pictures instead of the usual $2.50 ones. “How does it happen,” asked the salesman “you are not reordering on the $2.50 ones you used to buy? “Because,” was the answer, “guests used to take them from the walls. Our room rate is $2.50 a day, so it usually left us with no profit. We began to do some tall thinking. We struck upon this idea, all in eight little words. Now when a guest takes a picture from the wall, he finds a blank space with bright red lettering saying: “A picture has been taken from this wall.”
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