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Oct 15, 2024

Are Luxury Hotel Toiletries the Real Products? Here's the Truth - Thrillist

Without a doubt, the best part about staying at a Fairmont Hotel is the Le Labo. If you’re a skincare enthusiast like me, you understand what those brown bottles, which look like they’ve been plucked

Without a doubt, the best part about staying at a Fairmont Hotel is the Le Labo. If you’re a skincare enthusiast like me, you understand what those brown bottles, which look like they’ve been plucked from the shelves of an old-world apothecary, can do for your epidermis—and to your psyche. Indulging in that Rose 31 scent, with its delicate notes of cedar, musk, and amber, is such a luxury, that when it comes time for checkout, I always pocket my half-filled toiletries with gauche delight.

And yet, when I get home and the hotel halo fades, I never fail to quickly realize that the product is actually kind of average compared to the Le Labo lotions I’m familiar with, which retail for the steep price of $83. The scent, while strong, doesn’t have much staying power on the skin. And the consistency isn’t as moisturizing or rich.

I’m no chemist, but I can never shake the thought that this body lotion is a watered-down version of the real deal.

Turns out, I don’t need to be a chemist either. The truth is right there on the hotel’s website (emphasis mine): “Le Labo’s Rose 31 scent offers an appealing aroma for in-room amenities, featuring a chorus of warm, spicy, floral and woodsy notes. Shampoo, conditioner, body wash, body lotion, and soap products are lightly fragranced with the Rose 31 scent and are exclusive to Fairmont.”

Translation: The products may feature whispers of Le Labo’s signature scent, but the chemical composition has been tweaked by the brand partnership powers that be.

This, of course, is the way of modern hotels. These days, it’s rare to find a generic, unheard-of brand lining your bathroom sink or shower caddy. As far as luxury hotels go, expect to find D.S. and Durga at The Carlyle, Bamford at The Palace Hotel, or Diptyque at the Ritz-Carlton. The collaborations also extend to boutique hotels, like Hotel June in L.A., which offers guests Aesop, or Faraway in Nantucket, which is stocked with Byredo. The trend is a win-win — the hotels get to amplify their prestige, and the cosmetic companies get to spread brand awareness.

Ian Ginsberg, president of C.O. Bigelow, New York City’s famed 186-year-old pharmacy, has worked with hotels around the world for over 25 years, filling rooms with custom amenities that span the brand’s iconic Lavender Peppermint collection to the archival Aqua Melis line. Products from the latest cult skincare brand, he says, carry an imprimatur greater than that of any Four Seasons. “Even if you are the best hotel in the world, if the consumer sees your name on a bottle, they will think it's some private label stuff you just put your name on,” he says. “The perceived value from another brand is way more important, and now hotels have all turned the corner that way.”

It was probably naive of me, however, to think that such products are exact replicas of what you can find in stores. In practice, hotels typically work with these brands to create custom formulations that reasonably approximate their product at scale. These samples are designed to be as close to the real deal as possible, and in a perfect world, guests wouldn’t be able to sniff out the substitute.

I most certainly did, though. And so have many of my fellow skincare aficionados. But even though it can feel like a bait-and-switch, it’s hard to say that we’ve been blatantly duped when hotels insinuate they’re not the same thing. “Some hotel toiletries may look like retail name-brand products, but they’re often formulated and sourced differently to meet hospitality industry needs,” explains Anna Abelson, adjunct instructor at NYU School of Professional Studies’s Tisch Institute of Hospitality. “This can cause variations in quality and composition compared to store-bought versions.”

“Some hotel toiletries may look like retail name-brand products, but they’re often formulated and sourced differently to meet hospitality industry needs."

Abelson noticed the differences herself when she used to stay at Sofitel properties, which at one point boasted toiletries made in collaboration with Hermes, a product line she used regularly. She suspected that there was something different about the hotel version, but it wasn’t until she attended conferences hosted by the International Luxury Hotel Association that she became privy to conversations about altered formulations. Cost and shelf-life, Abelson says, are some of the factors that get considered when developing these collaborations.

So what do the brands themselves have to say about all of this?

Ginsberg explains that when it comes to his brand’s products, the decision to supply a hotel with an exact retail product versus something nearly identical depends on the budget of the property. “The north star is to do it exactly as it is,” he tells me. “But it’s a balance of cost. Sometimes the cost is too much, so we’ll try to modify the fragrance.” For example, if a fragrance—which could be made up of 30 to 40 different ingredients—uses an expensive form of lavender, Ginsberg says they might opt for a synthetic form instead.

The differences created by such reverse engineering are marginal, Ginsberg assures. Take, for another example, a body lotion that you can purchase at the flagship C.O. Bigelow pharmacy in New York City. In its development, there might’ve been an unfavorable base odor that chemists needed to cover with fragrance in order for the user to have a pleasant experience. “That’s in a big bottle, which people are using everyday, opening and closing,” he explains. “But if it’s in a hotel room, and it’s a one-ounce bottle or in a dispenser, maybe we don’t have to use such a high level. Maybe we’re using 2 percent instead of 3 percent.”

The idea is to give a hotel guest a just-close-enough experience—i.e., a good impression at a reasonable cost. “At the end of the day, these are all line items on the hotel’s balance sheet that get poured down the sink. But there’s a value add to a partnership with a great brand, and part of a great experience at a great property,” Ginsberg continues. “If we have to shave some pennies off here and there, we sometimes do, but it’s never to compromise the customer experience because that doesn’t do us any good.”

In some cases, you might even get the opposite effect, where a guest falls in love with a custom hotel toiletry, but can’t find it anywhere in-store. “The Four Seasons hotels provide tiny bottles of Bulgari conditioner—the best one for my old hair,” John Cleese tweeted back in 2016. “But I find I can’t buy it anywhere. Why?”

“We know where there are a few extras, just let us know how many you need, John,” the Four Seasons responded.

For their part, the Grand Hyatt treats their guests to Balmain products, but they’re not exactly working directly with the Parisian fashion house. They buy the toiletries from ADA Cosmetics, a German hospitality supplier with 45 years in the industry. ADA works in close collaboration with Balmain Hair Couture to create the Balmain Signature Collection, “a unique product line with body & hair care essentials designed for the ultimate luxury experience to indulge your guests,” the website reads.

“We can’t offer the same variety of products that Balmain can bring to the stores, so we have to design the one-size-fits-all solution while maintaining the high quality,” Christophe Müller-Stoffels, head of global communications at ADA Cosmetics, says about the difference between what Balmain offers directly and what ADA offers through the Grand Hyatt. “[That means] developing a product that works for, in the case of a shampoo, almost all hair types. Or when we talk about a body lotion, for almost all skin types.”

Echoing Ginsberg, Müller-Stoffels notes that cost is also a factor: “When you think about Balmain, or Amouage, another one of our brands, the retail products go for several hundreds of euros or dollars over-the-counter, and no hotel would pay that.”

So they have to figure out a manageable way to develop a product that upholds the reputation of all parties involved: Balmain, ADA Cosmetics, and Grand Hyatt. “The scent becomes a part of [the hotel’s] corporate identity,” Müller-Stoffels says, “and the quality of the product in the bathroom has such a high emotional value that when you sell your room for $250, $300, $400, or $500 per night, you shouldn’t be cheap on the products, which essentially costs you a couple of cents per customer per night.”

Whether or not the Balmain products at the Grand Hyatt stand true to the real deal is obviously up for debate. Impassioned Redditors, for instance, have shared their differing opinions.

It’s worth noting that many hotels are hopping on the large-format, refillable dispenser bandwagon in an effort to be more sustainable—a move that leaves some skincare skeptics even leerier. After all, how can one be sure what gets refilled, by hand, into a branded dispenser mounted to the wall? And is sustainability really the main influencer here? “That’s purely cost savings/penny pinching by the hotel,” one Redditor claims.

In fairness, there’s a lot of hair-splitting going on here. At the same time, any time you feel like even the tiniest little thing is being pulled over on you, it’s hard not to start asking a lot of bigger questions. Namely: Where else should I be reading the fine print?

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