Clearly, you never read "A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe." Douglas Adams said: ""A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have."

He is the authority on the subject.

I have stayed in ruddy hotels with ancient disgusting towels and I was glad that I had a towel. Although, I admit that, for the most part, I take a towel because Adam's asserted that it was the most useful thing a traveler could have.

It is better to have a patterned towel because the hotel proprietors are proprietary of white towels.