At the front desk of a Warsaw hotel, right next to an elegant marble counter, sits a cardboard box that once held printer paper. Inside: two iPhone chargers, a pair of Gucci sunglasses (or a convincing knockoff — nobody bothered to check), a stuffed bear named Henryk, and the passport of a citizen of the Republic of Korea. The box has no cataloguing system whatsoever. The receptionist, when asked about the procedure, shrugs and says: "we wait for someone to call."
This is not an anecdote from the nineties. This is March 2026.
Meanwhile, a few weeks earlier, in February 2026, the President of the Republic of Poland signed an amendment to the Act on Found Objects — the first major revision of the regulations in eleven years. The act does not merely tidy up archaic rules; it effectively compels thousands of institutions — from hotels, through conference centres, to railway stations, museums, and beyond — to implement formal, digital procedures for handling found items.
The new regulations take effect on 19 May 2026, but it is already clear that the cardboard box at the front desk is officially entering an era of twilight.
What lost-and-found management actually is — and why it matters
At first glance, the problem seems trivial: someone loses something, someone else finds it, and if luck is on their side, the item makes its way back to its owner. In reality, it is a logistical, legal, and reputational challenge of a scale that can surprise even seasoned managers.
According to widely cited estimates, hotel guests in the United States alone leave behind tens of millions of items every year. In a large hotel, that can mean ten to fifteen "finds" per day.
In London, the Transport for London system registers over six thousand items every week. In 2024, roughly seventeen thousand mobile phones were lost there; one thousand were collected — a mere 5.9%. Twelve thousand sets of keys handed in to the lost property office were reclaimed by just over two hundred owners, putting the "recovery rate" at approximately 2%. That means some twelve thousand people were left standing in front of locked doors, facing the need to change their locks — because the return system failed… or simply didn't exist.
In Poland, PKP Intercity recorded over 36,000 items left behind by passengers in 2025 — out of 89.2 million travellers. Among them were a double bass, a vintage typewriter, and an electric scooter. Proof that people are capable of forgetting quite literally anything — but also that institutions must be prepared for every scenario.
From paper folders to the cloud — a brief history of formalisation
The shift from paper to digital systems in lost-and-found management echoes other great transformations we already know — and no longer question.
When banks began migrating operations from paper ledgers to computer systems in the 1980s, many tellers protested: "the old system worked for generations." When hospitals introduced electronic medical records at the turn of the 21st century, doctors complained about losing the "intuition of the filing cabinet." When airlines abandoned paper tickets in favour of e-tickets, passengers kept printing confirmations for years — just in case.
In every one of these cases, the pattern was identical: resistance, adaptation, and then universal astonishment that things were ever done differently. Lost-and-found management stands at precisely the same point today.
The previous legislation — the Act of 20 February 2015 — was drafted in an era when the smartphone was still a luxury and BIP (the Public Information Bulletin) was an exotic novelty for many government offices. In the eleven years since, the world has moved on: AI-powered image recognition has emerged, cloud computing has become the norm, and citizens have grown accustomed to handling official matters via phone or the internet.
The analogy with electrification is particularly apt here. At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, factories could function without electricity — they had steam engines, after all. But those that connected to the electrical grid gained not just better lighting, but the ability to reorganise their entire production process. Digital Lost & Found systems are precisely that kind of electrical grid: the point is not merely "more convenient note-taking," but a fundamental shift in the way an institution treats the trust placed in it.
What's driving the change: anatomy of the new Act
The Act of 23 January 2026 — signed by the President in February of this year — introduces changes that, on the surface, look like a cosmetic legal tweak. In truth, they represent a breakthrough comparable to the introduction of mandatory cash registers. Let us examine the key mechanisms.
Let's start with a question that sounds dull but is, in practice, crucial: who is actually responsible for a lost item? Until now, the answer was an interpretive mess — a legislative game of hot potato between county offices that hotels were only too happy to exploit. The amendment settles the matter rather firmly: as a rule, jurisdiction lies with the county governor (starosta) of the district where the item was found. However, if the item was found in a public building, another building or premises open to the public, or in public transport, it first goes to the relevant property manager. In other words: not everything lands at the county office immediately, but it is no longer possible to pretend "it's not our problem."
The value threshold was handled equally cleverly. The old limit of one hundred zlotys — set in 2015 and faithfully ignoring inflation ever since — has been replaced with a dynamic index: five percent of the minimum wage. Programmers would call it a dynamic variable in the legal code: the threshold rises automatically with salaries, requiring no further amendment.
But the real weight of the amendment lies elsewhere. Every manager of a publicly accessible building — a hotel, shopping centre, university, railway station, museum, hospital, office building, or even a church or funeral home — must act upon finding an item:
- If they know the person entitled to collect it, or know their whereabouts, they must promptly notify them and request collection. No excuses — they must take an active approach, not a passive one.
- If they don't — they should post a notice on their website, provided they maintain one (practices in this regard are still taking shape).
- After 30 days from the date the item was identified on their premises, they must promptly hand it over to the relevant county governor — unless the rightful owner comes forward in the meantime.
This is not a suggestion — it is a statutory obligation, with all the consequences that word carries.
The collection deadlines have also changed, along with what happens to the item afterwards. The amended Article 187 of the Civil Code provides for six months from the notice to collect if the owner is known, or one year from the date the item was found if the owner cannot be identified. Only after these deadlines pass without result does the question of what happens next arise: as a rule, ownership may transfer to the finder, provided they fulfilled their obligations. If, however, the item was handed over to the county governor, the finder only becomes its owner once they collect it within the designated timeframe.
There are exceptions, too: historical artefacts and archival materials are taken over by the State Treasury, while documents containing personal data and items that grant access to premises, vehicles, or other lockable objects — keys, access cards, and remote controls in particular — become the property of the county and are subsequently destroyed. Yes: destroyed, not archived. GDPR sends its regards.
And finally, a change that appears technical but is, at its core, philosophical: the Act strengthens the digital circulation of information about found objects. At the property manager level, this means an obligation to publish the information on their own website — if one exists. Once the county governor takes over, official public channels come into play: an announcement in the Public Information Bulletin of the office serving the governor, as well as prompt publication on the national data portal. Polish law is thus making it quite clear that the digital channel is no longer an add-on — it is becoming the standard.
A small legislative step, a giant organisational leap.
This is why, in the current situation, it doesn't just seem but genuinely becomes obvious that the simplest way to solve the problem of found items in a hotel, office building, or shopping centre is to return them — effectively and as quickly as possible — to their rightful owner, before the matter has time to grow from a minor inconvenience into a full-blown legal and operational process.
Numbers that don't lie
If we could peek behind the scenes at the front desk of a typical Polish hotel, we'd discover a fascinating catalogue of human absent-mindedness. Industry research shows that chargers are the most commonly found items in hotels — which, in the smartphone era, is the equivalent of leaving one's walking stick in an omnibus in 19th-century London. Clothing comes second, followed by documents, jewellery, and… passports.
It is this last item that should set off alarm bells for every hotel director: a passport is not a charger. A passport requires special care and a separate handling procedure, because passport documents and identity cards are not subject to the standard regime of the Act on Found Objects. The cardboard box under the counter suddenly stops being so innocent.
The data from the guest's perspective is even more revealing. Around one-third of travellers declare their willingness to return to a hotel to retrieve a lost item, and some are prepared to travel as far as 200 kilometres — roughly the distance from Warsaw to Radom and back. That number speaks volumes about the emotional value of the things we leave behind in hotel rooms.
But it says something else, too: it points to an enormous, untapped potential for building loyalty. Because if a guest is willing to make such a long journey to recover their favourite sunglasses, a hotel that reaches out proactively and offers to ship them isn't doing a favour — it is building a relationship. This is precisely how Refindi.com works: it transforms a moment of potential frustration into an experience the guest remembers — and writes a positive review about.
The global Lost & Found software market is growing at a pace that raises eyebrows even among seasoned analysts. Estimates vary — as they tend to in young industries: conservative figures place the worldwide market in the hundreds of millions of dollars, potentially exceeding one billion within the next two to three years. Others, applying a broader definition that includes return logistics and baggage handling, estimate it at over two to three billion dollars, with projections surpassing five billion by 2030. Regardless of methodology, the direction is unambiguous: double-digit year-on-year growth. The question is no longer "whether to automate Lost & Found," but "with what — and how fast."
In aviation, the scale of the problem is nothing short of astronomical: in 2024, over 36 million pieces of baggage were mishandled worldwide. Although the rate improved from 7.6 to 6.9 per thousand passengers, the absolute numbers continue to climb. It is an experience familiar to nearly every traveller — and a reminder that the problem of lost property is not niche. It is systemic.
How others do it: when a lost item becomes a process
In mature markets, several distinct models are now visible. Austria has demonstrated for years that found objects can be handled systematically. In the United States, the emphasis has been on scale, automation, and simplicity of service. In Poland, similar thinking is only just gaining momentum, but the direction is already clear: items left behind are ceasing to be an awkward operational footnote and are beginning to be treated as a fully-fledged process that can be structured, measured, and improved.
And perhaps that is the most important point of all. Not the technology itself, but the shift in perspective. Because a well-designed return process doesn't need to be spectacular. It just needs to work: clarifying responsibility, reducing staff time, limiting errors, and giving the guest a straightforward path to recovering their property.
The best solutions are born not from fascination with novelty, but from careful observation of how hotels actually operate and what people on both sides of the front desk truly need.
This is why Lost & Found is increasingly moving out of the back office and into the mainstream of thinking. Not as a fashionable add-on to digitalisation, but as an element of the guest experience, operational efficiency, and plain professional integrity. And hospitality, as we know, has always rested on such things: seemingly small, yet decisive in whether a guest remembers chaos — or class.
The stick and the carrot: what this means for businesses
The new Act creates a situation in which institutions managing public and commercial spaces face both compulsion and opportunity at once. Let's start with the stick.
Legal risk. A thirty-day deadline to identify the owner or hand the item over, an obligation to transfer it to the county governor, a requirement to publish information online — these are not suggestions but statutory duties. Failure to comply exposes the manager to civil liability and, in extreme cases, to charges of misappropriation of property. A hotel that keeps a guest's passport in a cardboard box for six months with no procedure whatsoever risks a serious breach of applicable regulations and security standards.
Reputational risk. In the age of social media, a single dissatisfied guest can generate more brand damage than one might expect from a seemingly minor incident. A post reading "Hotel X lost my passport and nobody called back" on TripAdvisor, Google, or social media is something no marketing budget can offset. And let's remember — the new Act applies far beyond hotels. A shopping centre where a handbag with documents goes missing, a university where a student leaves behind a laptop, a conference centre after a congress wraps up — each of these institutions is subject to the same regulations.
GDPR risk. The new regulations explicitly govern the procedure for handling documents containing personal data and items that grant access — these are subject to a special procedure, and once the deadline expires and ownership passes to the county, they must be destroyed, not archived. An institution storing such items without proper records risks violating the Act on Found Objects and facing sanctions under GDPR. This is a double legal exposure that many property managers aren't even aware of.
And now the carrot — a juicier one than you might expect.
Guest loyalty. The moment a hotel contacts a guest to let them know their forgotten sunglasses have been found is — paradoxically — one of the most loyalty-building touchpoints in the entire service cycle. A guest whose lost item is efficiently returned doesn't just come back — they recommend. As mentioned earlier, research shows that guests are willing to return to collect a lost item. But in the age of digitalisation, they don't have to — all it takes is a dedicated Lost & Found platform. Everyone cares about their rating on booking platforms, where the difference between a four and a five translates into thousands in revenue, making every such touchpoint worth its weight in gold — quite literally.
Time and cost savings. Fifteen to thirty minutes of a receptionist's time per item — in a large hotel with ten to fifteen "finds" a day (those are the statistics) — that's potentially dozens of working hours per week "carved out" of guest service, upselling, and other revenue-generating tasks. Automating this process is not a cost; it is an investment with a measurable return.
Compliance as a competitive advantage. At the moment compliance becomes mandatory, institutions that implemented it earlier and more effectively gain an edge. A hotel with a digital lost-and-found management system doesn't just meet legal requirements — it demonstrates a level of professionalism that guests, business partners, insurers, hotel chain auditors, and even potential investors all notice. It is the same mechanism that turned ISO certification from a mere proof of quality into a marketing tool.
The bigger picture: the digitalisation of trust
The new Act is part of a broader trend that might be called the digitalisation of institutional trust. Over the past two decades, we have been systematically transferring processes once built on paper and good faith into the digital realm: invoicing, medical records, tax registries, court records. In every case, digitalisation produced three effects: it increased transparency, improved oversight, and raised the quality of service.
Lost-and-found management is one of the last bastions of analogue operations within institutional processes. It is a paradox: we live in a world where we can hail a taxi through an app in three seconds, yet the system for returning a lost phone still relies on a sticky note reading "room 417, black charger."
Instead of an epilogue: on the box and the future
The cardboard printer-paper box at a Warsaw hotel is not a symbol of ill will. It is a symbol of inertia — the same inertia that led coachmen to ignore the first automobiles and telegraph operators to dismiss the telephone.
The law is changing as we speak. The technology is ready. The market is growing at double-digit rates year on year. Guests expect professionalism at every stage of their interaction with a property, including that seemingly marginal moment when it turns out they left their charger in the room.
The new Act on Found Objects is not a revolution — it is the formalisation of what should have been obvious all along. Institutions that treat it as just another bureaucratic obligation will miss an opportunity. Those that see it as an impetus to implement modern, digital processes will gain something greater than legal compliance: they will earn the trust of people who entrust them with their belongings — and through that, even if just for a moment, a piece of their peace of mind.
The future of lost-and-found management does not lie in a bigger box. It lies in a better system. And that future is already on its way.
