A new survey by First Option has revealed that American hotel guests certainly don’t treat hotel rooms as they would their own bedrooms and regularly help themselves to toiletries from the housekeeping trolley.

According to the survey, due to be published in the autumn issue of First Option’s free quarterly magazine, First Forum, found that 52 per cent of Americans who have stayed in a hotel for leisure do things they would not normally do at home: 25 per cent like to throw their towels on the floor, 19 per cent eat in bed and 13 per cent leave the television on when they go out.

Almost two thirds of guests (61 per cent) admit to taking the toiletries while 20 per cent take them from the housekeeper’s trolley – particularly men aged between 18- and 35-years-old, of whom one in three claimed to help themselves from the trolley.

Other common souvenirs to be liberated from hotel bedrooms include towels, with 18 per cent of respondents saying they take them home, ashtrays (14 per cent), bathrobes (2 per cent) and bathmats (2 per cent).

Respondents were just as lax about sticking to hotel rules, with 52 per cent of 18- to 34-year-olds sneaking extra people into their rooms, 12 per cent of people admitted to smoking in non-smoking rooms and 11 per cent take their pets with them.

First Option, the UK-based accommodation and conference reservation company, was acquired by lastminute.com last January for £12.1m. Details: www.first-option.co.uk