How Hotels Really Feel About You Taking Their Toiletries

Is it OK to take home a hotel room’s shampoo?

The answer is yes. “If you take it, then you must have liked it,” Scott Mitchell, Marriott International’s director of design and development, recently told Forbes. Marriott and other establishments usually want people to grab bottles of lotion, shampoo, conditioner, soap and other amenities before checking out. After all, hotels put a lot of effort into choosing the right products for their rooms. Nothing validates those decisions more than an empty bathroom shelf. In the Forbes article, the selection teams for Marriott and Starwood revealed how they make their decisions.

Mitchell said that his team visited stores around the globe and tested 52 brands of shampoo, conditioner, body gel, lotion and soap before finally settling on what guests now find in — and take from — Marriott lodgings.

But guests won’t necessarily encounter the same products everywhere. For example, Marriott selected Thann, a Bangkok-based natural skincare line, for their properties in the Americas and Asia Pacific because those regions’ customers preferred “hip and cool” amenities. Meanwhile, European and African hotels were partial to products from family-owned companies. For them, Marriott chose Acca Kappa, an Italian beauty company founded in 1869.

Because it’s not just what’s on the inside that counts, Marriott also carefully considered packaging. For instance, while flip caps are easier to open with one hand than screw caps, they also add about a penny to the price of each bottle. At 100 million bottles annually, that’s about $1 million.

Hotel room amenities have especially gained importance since the international ban on traveling with liquids larger than 3 ounces went into effect. Because people now carry fewer products from home, toiletries have “moved beyond soap,” according to Hoyt Harper, global brand leader for Starwood’s Sheraton Hotels and Resorts Group. “Guests demand more and they want higher quality products.”

Harper added that 10 years ago, about 35 percent of Sheraton guests used the hotel’s toiletries. Today, that figure has ballooned to 75 percent.

Hotels also put a lot of thought into picking the right linens. For example, some of Marriott’s lower-tier accommodations — Courtyard, Fairfield Inn & Suites, etc. — don’t own ironing equipment to rid sheets of wrinkles. The problem, of course, is that guests hate wrinkles. So after extensive research and testing, the hotels started using sheets that shrink in different ways after washings and dryings, creating a more aesthetic “waffled” look.

Still, no matter how nice the sheets, Harper said hotels prefer that guests not pack them into their suitcases. They are welcome to pack the shampoo, though!

[Photo: iStock]