TORONTO—Retrieving and eventually returning lost items for guests can be something of a lost cause for many hotels, which are often armed with little more than an Excel spreadsheet or old-fashioned log book to help them out. Such antiquated methods, as well as his wife leaving her shoes behind at a Niagara Falls hotel a few years back, inspired Paul Mercer to create a web-based solution called ileftmystuff!com.
Mercer—whose background in the courier industry served as a catalyst for the company—detailed what he encountered when he tried to get his wife’s shoes back. “I called up the hotel and very quickly came to the realization that it was not an easy process for the hotel, and it certainly wasn’t a great experience for the guest,” he said.
Mercer eventually suggested to the associate that he email a label and send a courier to pick up the item rather than having her take down all of his personal information, and the rest is history. “I hung up the phone and, at that point, a light went on in my head. We ended up calling about 20 of the top [area]hotels to see what those hotels were doing to manage their lost and found and discovered that all of them had one form or another, but really didn’t have a complete solution in place,” he said.
After a property registers with ileftmystuff!com, guests who contact the hotel looking for lost items are directed to the website, where they can report the items and provide a detailed description of them, including where they lost them. When the hotel finds the items, guests are sent an email requesting their address info, and they are asked to pick a service level to pay for the return through a PCI-compliant credit card tool. Once that’s done, the hotel receives an alert, prints out a label and automatically pages a courier for pickup. In addition, guests are updated on where the item is throughout the delivery process, eliminating the need to call the hotel.
Since the system is free for hotels, Mercer noted the company’s business model is based on adding a nominal service fee into the shipping cost. He noted that approximately 600 hotels have registered to utilize ileftmystuff!com, which has returned nearly 20,000 items since being launched. He added the hotels run the gamut from 12-cottage resorts to 2,000-room hotels, and “everything in between.” Mercer also said the company is an endorsed vendor for Best Western.
Mercer insisted that feedback from hotels was critical when developing the product, and ease of use at the property level was a key consideration as well. “I wanted to make sure that our system was really designed with the hoteliers’ involvement so that it functioned within their environments. You’ve got a lot of small properties that have housekeeping people that don’t have a lot of computer experience. If this is going to be successful and it’s going to be used, we’ve got to make sure that it’s easy and effective,” he said.
Mercer added the company provides regular web training sessions to teach staff how to use the system effectively. He cited feedback from an Orlando hotel, which did an in-depth time study and noted it went from 45 minutes to less than 10 minutes to process a return with ileftmystuff!com. In addition, Mercer noted the system enables hotels to save more than just time, as they are frequently charged back as the result of declined credit cards, guests refusing courier charges and incorrect address information.
Finally, Mercer was asked about his long-term objectives for the company. “I’d like to see Ileftmystuff!com be the standard for lost and found. We are very focused on being a specific solution provider and focusing on making the system the best that it can be,” he said.
—Dennis Nessler