When Kavit Handa’s young daughter left her Minnie Mouse stuffed toy in a hotel room, her tears and the trauma of trying to get it back sparked the idea behind a business venture.
“My daughter, Sienna, was distraught,” says the Dubai-based entrepreneur.
“What followed was a series of long-distance phone calls and a lot of hold music over the phone. I knew that this was a process that could be made easier for the customer.”
A few months of research and thousands of man-hours of coding later, ReturnHound was born.
The service, which was launched last March and is being piloted at selected hotel chains in the UAE, helps to reunite owners with their lost property through an online matching algorithm that cuts out the hassle of tracking and delivery time.
According to ReturnHound, an estimated 300,000 items are left behind in hotels rooms and on airplanes around the world.
Guests at participating hotels who leave something behind can go to the website and fill in a form describing the item, the date it was left and their address.
When the item is found, the hotel logs the details with ReturnHound, which then sends a verification email to its owner. ReturnHound then arranges to send the items by courier.
The customer then pays the regular courier charge and can choose to also pay an additional optional service fee of US $5 (Dh18). “The customer can choose not to pay it but, so far, our experience has been most people are happy to reward good service,” Handa says.
The programme, which is so far available in Arabic, English and French, is being rolled out regionally across hotel groups including Sofitel, Ibis, Pullman and Novotel.
Since its launch, the service has so far reunited close to 100 customers with their lost belongings.
For more details, visit www.returnhound.com and @returnhound on Instagram.
aahmed@thenational.ae
