Hotel Toiletries And Sustainability

Bliss Toiletries at W Hotels

Luxury hotels will pay attention to every detail even the bathroom amenities and toiletries. From organic ingredient to customized fragrance, unique bottles to selected essential oil, toiletries in luxury hotels becomes more and more quality oriented. On the other hand, the amenities dispensers also gain increasing attention from hoteliers due to the sustainable issues and corporate social responsibilities.

Bathroom amenities as marketing tools

Toiletries can also be powerful marketing tools for hotels. Hotel bathroom amenities are considered as physical evidence since they are tangible. They affect the consumer’s experience throughout their stay. Since only three-ounce liquid could be carried on airplanes, hotel toiletries become more popular among business travellers. This results in the upgrade of toiletries in the industry (Jones, 2008). Service of a hotel is intangible, which make it difficult for customers to evaluate the service quality. Therefore, physical evidence plays an important role. The travel-sized shampoos or lotions are something many travellers view as pleasant gifts and like to bring back home, although the cost is already hidden in the room rates. Then when the guest use them again, the toiletries will remind him or her of the memories and experience in that certain hotel. They perceive the value; therefore, the customer loyalty might be increased (Edelman, 2010).

L'Occitane at Four Seasons Hotel

Famous or luxury brands like Salvatore Ferragamo used by Waldorf Astoria, L’Occitane used by Four Seasons or Bliss used by W Hotels may bring the image of quality and cares to the guests. The director of design and development for Marriott International said guest must have liked the toiletries if they take it. In the article, Harper from Starwood stated that now 75% of guest would use the toiletries while there were only 35% ten years ago due to the ban of liquid (Touryalai, 2014). The investment on toiletries is not only to meet the growing demands, but also to differentiate hotels from other competitors and communicate their image to the target market (Hoffman et al, 2009). As an example, W Hotel is famous for its edgy image and innovative design. Bliss, the selected brand for amenities of W Hotels and W Retreats, is well communicating W Hotel’s image with the light blue colour and refreshing scent of lemon and sage (Starwoodhotels.com, 2015). Hotels like W or Four Seasons choose to use brand amenities, while some other hotels like Banyan Tree prefer to launch their own products and market the brands. While I was doing internship in Angsana Ihuru Resort Maldives (a property of Banyan Tree), many guests bought the Angsana and Banyan Tree products in hotel’s shop because they said they really liked the fragrance of the shampoo as well as the texture of soap (like the jelly).

Banyan Tree's Products

Since there might be many hotels using brand toiletries within one destination area, designing own amenity products will be a good choice to help the hotel stand out from competitors. Unique in-house products and amenities are not only shampoos or soap bars but also can be gifts or souvenirs. Again, the example of Banyan Tree, toiletries provided in the hotels are non-toxic and biodegradable. They are filled in reusable containers made from celadon or ceramic, which are also their own products. Guests can buy all of them in the shop and bring them home. As a consumer, I will prefer to buy those products that only be sold in this hotel instead of brands can be bought from anywhere in the world unless the price is a lot cheaper.

Banyan Tree's Reusable Container

Sustainability and corporate social responsibilities

On the other hand, the waste created by amenities has also been a top concern in hospitality industry. There is over 1 kg of waste generated by each guest daily during the operations of a hotel and almost 50% of this solid waste can be recycled (Bohdanowicz, 2005). For the past few years, different industries have paid much more attention to the sustainability and corporate social responsibilities.

Shampoo Dispensers

The free tiny bottles of shampoo and shower gel are also becoming controversial because of the sustainable issues. Pat Maher, the green consultant for the American Hotel and Lodging Association mentioned that hotels who say they’re eco-friendly but without shampoo dispensers would start getting complaints from the guests according to an article on NBC News website contributed by Harriet Baskas, a travel writer (2010). What’s more, Maher said that hotel properties including luxury hotels such as Ritz Carlton were testing or installing the amenities dispensers. But Baskas stated that some frequent travellers considered the amenities dispensers as unsanitary and tacky since they might wonder who have touched the dispensers before. And according to the study conducted by Millar and Baloglu (2011), relatively few respondents in their study would pay more to stay in a “green” guestroom. Many people think a reduction in the amenity package would reduce luxury hotel room’s perceived value. However, the Saunders Hotels in Boston reinvested in the amenities by using the money saved from reducing bottled amenities, which allowed them to provide high quality toiletries to the guests (Jones, 2008).

Special Designed Soap

Except for the liquid toiletries, the waste in bars of soap is huge as well. According to Baskas (2010), some hotels tried to use smaller bars or bars looks same size but have a third less soap due to the curve design. There are even companies who design the bars of soap with a large hole in the middle to eliminate the unused part of soap bars. Only in the United States, still, about 800 million bars of slightly used soap were thrown away each year. However, several non-profit organizations have been gathering the balanced toiletries such as used soap or shampoo and recycling them. After sanitizing and melting, the new bars will be sent to places like refugee camps in Africa or homeless shelters and communities.

Conclusion

Hotels bathroom amenities and toiletries can be used as a marketing tool to increase the customer loyalty. Meanwhile, the waste from hotel amenities has also become a top concern. The hotel industry should carefully consider the pros and cons in order to run a sustainable business.

References

Baskas, H. (2010). Hotels dispensing with bathroom clutter. [online] msnbc.com. Available at: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/37361936/ns/travel-travel_tips/t/hotels-dispensing-bathroom-clutter/#.VLbvBPRfdvg [Accessed 15 Jan. 2015].

Bohdanowicz, P. (2005). European Hoteliers' Environmental Attitudes: Greening the Business. Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly, 46(2), pp.188-204.

Hoffman, K. D., Bateson, J. E. G., Wood, E. H. and Kenyon, A. J. (2009). Services Marketing: Concepts, Strategies & Cases. London: Cengage Learning, pp.261-291.

Jones, T. J. A. (2008). Professional management of housekeeping operations. 5th ed. Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, pp.133-137.

Millar, M. and Baloglu, S. (2011). Hotel Guests' Preferences for Green Guest Room Attributes. Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, 52(3), pp.302-311.

Starwoodhotels.com, (2015). Starwood Hotels & Resorts. [online] Available at: http://www.starwoodhotels.com/whotels/about/history.html?&language=en_US&localeCode=en_US [Accessed 15 Jan. 2015].

Touryalai, H. (2014). Hotel Science: How Marriott & Starwood Hotels Choose Your Room Amenities. [online] Forbes. Available at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/halahtouryalai/2014/08/06/hotel-science-how-marriott-starwood-hotels-choose-your-room-amenities/ [Accessed 15 Jan. 2015].