#1780: Hospitalidry

Hotels like to supply their guests with a way to get into a waiting car without getting soaked by the rain (assuming the absence of a liveried postillion with a brolly).

Supplying umbrellas becomes unpopular with hotel management, though, when people walk off with them.

Today’s invention is a novel guest umbrella.

It would be designed as a large flat disk with a long, thin conical handle. The umbrella would not collapse but would remain as shown.

A guest could pick one of these up from a nested, space-saving set in the foyer and use it to get into their vehicle. It would then be much too big to get in their car, even if they wanted to take it away and so it would be left, handle-upwards, on the driveway.

Cars could safely drive over the handles, deflecting them but not damaging them (or their vehicles), until they were later collected for reuse.