From yesterday's USA Today:
Hotels stock up on guest toiletries
Posted 8/14/2006 11:21 PM ET
By Kitty Bean Yancey, USA TODAY
The roll-aboard crowd is the bread and butter of the hotel industry. Hotels are reporting a surge in demand for toothpaste, mouthwash and the like and are responding to frequent fliers' new needs:
• Omni and Starwood hotels have started offering free hair-care products and contact lens solution. Omni's list includes nail polish and remover.
• Wyndham is adding lens solution, hair gel and hairspray to on-request free amenities such as toothpaste that they have long offered. And bottled water is being handed out.
• Marriotts, like many chain hotels, already offer some free toiletries on request. Courtyard New York JFK Airport just started offering complimentary contact lens solution, deodorant and more, but the program is not chainwide.
"We're seeing how the (new restrictions) play out," Marriott spokesman John Wolf says. "It's too soon to say."
• Sterling Inn in Sterling Heights, Mich., is letting repeat guests store their own toiletries. That's a service that luxury hotels such as Four Seasons already offer frequent guests.
• On Friday, Choice Hotels, with brands that include Comfort Inn, Quality Inn and Clarion, sent a message to its 4,000-plus U.S. properties encouraging them to make available free basics, including facial skin-care products, cosmetics, hair products, sunscreen, nail polish and remover, plus bottled water.
Such programs are welcome news to road warriors.
"I love this idea," says Joe Tomasone, a wireless-network security engineer in Tampa. "If hotels were to start carrying trial-sized toiletries as a matter of course, I think it would be not only a great service to the traveler, but a savvy business move."
Meanwhile, some lodgings are getting downright creative.
The Exchange Hotel in New York City announced that it would provide a $25 gift card for the Duane Reade drugstore chain for travelers or would FedEx their carry-on bag home at no extra charge.
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My first-hand experience:
Marriott Vacation Clubs offers a "Vacation Starter Pack" to arriving owners. While I understand the contents rotate, the box I received this week included the following:
2 oz. Vaseline Healthy Body Glow (moisturizer/self-tanner)
.98 oz. Loreal's Men's Comfort Max Anti-Irritation Balm with sunscreen
.7 oz. Mitchum (unscented)
2 samples, each with 2 packets, of Colgate Luminous (could probably last 4 - 8 total uses)
2 samples of .35 fl. oz. Softsoap Pure Cashmere body wash (2 - 4 uses total)
1 packet of liquid Tide with Febreze (for 1 load of laundry)
.2 fl. oz. Dove Smoothing Frizz Control
.3 oz. Dove Define and Shine Control Gel
4 pieces of Trident Tropical Fruit
1 Nature Valley Granola Bar: Sweet and Salty Peanut
2 single-use packs of Maxwell House coffee (regular and decaf)
Sugar, fake sweetener, and creamer packets
It was a tightly packed box! Lots of genuinely useable goodies!
Additional toiletries and groceries were available on the on-site MarketPlace so you could replace just about anything you might have forgotten or had confiscated... but they didn't have saline solution (the one item I needed after my bottle leaked in-flight!).