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Putting on the Ritz - in a nicked bathrobe

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SCMP Reporter

IT must rank as one of the world's best bargains: a weekend in London's Ritz hotel in exchange for a (clean) chamber-pot.

And if you are one of the 800 guests who last year walked off with a Ritz monogrammed bath-robe, taking it back could win you a slap-up dinner.

It's not so much that times are tough for British hoteliers - although occupancy rates recorded last year would make their Hongkong counterparts weep - as that the hotel is on a belated drive to record history.

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Mr Radha Arora, the hotel's latest and youngest general manager, is rounding up bric-a-brac lost or stolen over the years, rewarding the belatedly honest with a host of treats.

War-time bills from the Ritz can be exchanged for a bottle of bubbly at pre-war prices; autographed menus earn a lunch; and brushes and combs could be worth a Champagne weekend for two.

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Hotels have long been considered fair game for ripping off trifles - shampoo and bubble bath, towels, slippers and the 6,000 ashtrays that walked from the Ritz last year - but the grander hostelries also attract grander thefts.

Two spectacular thefts were of a Mercedes Benz, whipped from outside the hotel, and, in 1921, a piano.

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