It wasn’t that many years ago, hoteliers would never even consider replacing wrapped bar soap and bottled amenities with dispensers. I think that time has passed, and many GMs and owners—and more importantly, guests—are ready to accept dispensers as the smart way to distribute hotel bathroom amenities.
As a recent post in Hotel Chatter reveals, hotels in all markets and segments are switching to dispensers. Dispensers makes sense on many levels: they’re cheaper, they’re certainly greener and, as a recent study shows, consumer sales of liquid soap have outpaced bar soap sales for a number of years. Most people use liquid bath products in their home so why wouldn’t they accept dispensers in their guestrooms?
I recently toured the prototype guestroom for Hilton’s new mid-scale extended-stay Home 2 brand. (The full-scale, completely furnished room is in a Hampton Inn in suburban Memphis near the brand’s headquarters.) In the bathroom of the new brand, which will debut later this year, are dispensers for bath soap and shampoo/conditioners.
Smart owners and operators will jump on the dispenser bandwagon. There’s no reason any more not to do so.
As someone that has been advocating for the use of Dispensers in Hotels since 1994 I could not agree more. In hotel after hotel, guests readily accept the use of dispensers in guest bathrooms.
We do recommend the following:
1) Use high quality products in the dispensers
2) Communicate about the environmental benefit
3) Brand the dispenser i.e. Sonoma Soap Co, GreenSPA, Earth Perfect, Pharmacopia, EO, etc. are some of the products that work well in today’s upscale dispensers.
4) Insure that it is just one of many environmental initiatives that you provide in the guestroom. Not, the only one.