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Tags: Hotel News Briefs / Starwood Hotels / Hotel Toiletries / Bliss Spas / → All Tags
Don't Worry Your Bliss Toiletries Are Still Safe
Yes, we know that most of you who shack up at W Hotels do it for the Bliss Toiletries that are placed in the bathrooms. Just admit it! But although Starwood announced today its plans to sell its Bliss unit, you can rest assured that the toiletries will remain in the W Hotel bathrooms. Also, Bliss spas and Remede spas in the St. Regis Hotels will still be open and functioning. It's just a business transaction, it won't harm your complexion.
We haven't done this for a while but here are some other news worth checking out today:
· Why Martha Stewart Got Married to Sandals Resorts [Hotel Check-In]
· Luxe Hotels Expands to Downtown LA [Press Release]
· Space Hotel Totally Opening in 2012. Far out! [Reuters]
· What To Look For In a Good Hotel Room [Philly Inquirer]
Tags: Hotels Doing Good / Atlanta Hotels / Hotel Toiletries / Hotel Soap / → All Tags
Atlanta Hotels Want You To Leave Your Used Soap Behind
We just wrote about Hotels Doing Good yesterday, but you know the saying: When it rains, it pours goodwill! Today brings us word of another good cause, one that begins in your hotel bathroom. Specifically, with your soap. Perhaps you pay that bar of soap no mind, or maybe you (cough, cough) try to use just one bar and pilfer the other for your own bathroom. Regardless, if you leave a used bar of soap behind, it gets thrown out by housekeeping once you check out.
Not any more. Enter the Global Soap Project, an initiative started by Derreck Kayongo, a former refugee from Uganda, who first came to the U.S. 15 years ago.
Tags: Snapshot / Hotel Toiletries / Hotel Services / Miami Hotels / Kimpton Hotels / → All Tags
Need Fashion Tape or Tweezers? Consult The EPIC Hotel's 'Forgot It? We've Got It' List
As more and more airlines start charging more and more money to check passenger bags, the chances that you forgot to pack some very-necessary toiletries into that quart-sized plastic bag to stuff into your carry-on suitcase, so you can avoid the ridiculous $20 fees, are probably going to increase as well.
That's why we're loving the EPIC Hotel's "Forgot It? We Got It!" list of complimentary and for sale toiletry items. What's free? Toothbrush, toothpaste, fashion tape, straightening irons, humidifiers, some other female products and a new quart-sized plastic bag for the flight home.
What's for sale? $2 tweezers, $2 nail polish remover wipes, $4 contact lens solution and $3 deodorant. For anyone who's ever been late to a meeting and forgot to pack deodorant and a hairbrush (that's what we forget the most!) $5 seems to be a reasonable charge to pay for a quick fix, especially if that straightening iron is free. All you have to do is dial-up the front desk.
Now if only there were a Pitbull stain eraser for sale at the hotel.
[Photo: HotelChatter's MsRebecca.]
Tags: Hotel Toiletries / Westin Hotels / Hotel Spas / Hotel Swag / → All Tags
Testing Out Westin's Heavenly Bath Toiletries
It's no secret that we love talking about hotel toiletries here at HotelChatter, but we have to admit we're pretty set in our ways. We like Kiehl's, Fresh and Red Flower toiletries (in that order) — and we're willing to risk a 3oz violation at the TSA checkpoint for these babies too.
So when a batch of the new Westin Heavenly Bath toiletries arrived on our doorstep, we thought we'd give them a try. But we weren't going to hog them to ourselves. We were on our way to Palm Springs and we thought we'd pack them with us so our friends could try them out too — a sort of unofficial focus group, if you will.
Upon asking our friends if they could sample the goods during their next shower, a lady friend who had just come back from the Westin St. John nearly freaked out. Apparently, the hotel already had the new bath toiletries in place and she admitted to hoarding the new Heavenly Bath toiletries. We were going to ask her if she raided any cleaning carts but we were afraid for the answer.
Tags: Hotel Bookshelves / Sandra Ardito / Interviews / Red Flower / Hotel Toiletries / → All Tags
Cooper Square Guests Like Their Books 'Arty' (And a Little Sexy, Too)
Hotels have gone gaga for books — but have the guests? We checked in with the Cooper Square Hotel’s librarian (aka head of sales, marketing and special events), Sandra Ardito, to find out.
“It’s been incredible,” Ardito tells us. “We've had some guests that have purchased up to $1,000 worth of books in the library.”
Obviously, there are cheaper places to buy books (without the $245 a night cover charge), but the Coop is doing it all for a good cause. The books are sourced from NYC charity Housing Works (which does work to combat AIDS and homelessness), and proceeds go back to the organization.
For cheapskates, there’s a loaner system: the books are branded with an old-fashioned library stamp, and guests can take books from the library back to their rooms—where there are even more books.
Tags: Hotel Toiletries / Westin Hotels / Hotel News / Hotel Amenities / → All Tags
Westin's New Heavenly Bath Amenities Now Available
Ohhh, new toiletries!
You know we're sorta obsessed with hotel toiletries — the good ones, that is (think separate shampoos and conditioners rather than some kind of hair-assaulting/insulting shamp-condi hybrid) — and we get kinda excited when we hear of a new line of 'em coming out.
Not surprisingly, news of Westin's new Heavenly Bath Line brings joy to our hearts — but not to our hair and skin just yet, since we haven't had the chance to try 'em out ourselves:
Specially designed to soothe the senses with a blend of botanicals and natural ingredients, the collection is available in balancing White Tea Aloe, uplifting Green Tea Grapefruit, and calming Chamomile Lavender. Each product, including a Heavenly shower gel, shampoo, conditioner, lotion, and body oil, is made with natural ingredients such as wheat proteins and mineral peptides; true essential oils; and vitamins A, C, and E.
The new amenities are inspired by Westin's White Tea fragrance, and they were rolled out across Westin guestrooms just recently — you will also encounter the new toiletry goodies if you get yourself a treatment at a Heavenly Spa.
The full-sized items are going to run for about $12-20 each if you want to buy 'em for your house, or you can get a travel-size kit for $14 (or, pssst, you can just steal the ones in the room and put them in a plastic baggie and call it a travel kit, too.)
Tags: Hotel Amenities / Travel + Leisure / Hotel Toiletries / → All Tags
Stealing Hotel Amenities Ain't No Thang
Psst…Yeah, you, sporting the terry cloth robe embroidered with the scarlet letter of hotel thievery — a Four Seasons logo on the left chest. We’ve talked about your — er, our — kind before: the casual hotel grifter, recognizable by the trail of hotel rooms swiped clean of cute toiletries, pens, stationary, and the occasional novelty item.
And hey! Even the fancier-than-us folks at Travel + Leisure succumb to the lure of a little hotel petty larceny, which we interpret as meaning our temptations were signs of class all along. For proof, check out this article by Lynn Yaeger, in which she seeks peace from her guilt over swiping a linen laundry bag from the Alvear Palace Hotel in Buenos Aires.
“The truth is that even the most parsimonious innkeepers want you to take their grooming products and paper goods home, the thinking being that every time you use an item that bears the hotel's name you'll remember what a wonderful time you had there and plan another visit (and not just to take more stuff),” Yaeger writes.
Tags: Hotel Toiletries / Snapshot / Hotel Amenities / Chicago Hotels / Green Hotels / → All Tags
The Donut-Esque Green Soap at The James is Kinda Genius
When it comes to hotel toiletries, making an effort to go green usually means a hotel will nix the whole teensy-bottle thing and opt for more the more eco-friendly option of refillable bulk dispensers. But what that means for us is usually a) a body wash-only situation for those of us who are bar soap enthusiasts and b) no teeny toiletry freebies to stuff into your suitcase. Sad!
The James has a hot solution with this, um, green soap donut thingy. The eco-friendly packaging solves the wrapper-waste issue, we get our bar soap, we have something nice to hold onto while we scrub-a-dub, and, like, let's be real: do we ever really use the whole bar of soap — all the way down into the middle — during a hotel stay? No. No we don't.
This snapshot comes from a writer at PSFK.com, who dug the whole idea, too. Funky. Cool. Eco-friendly. But sadly, it wasn't yet around for our enjoyment when we hit up The James last August.
[Photo: PSFK]
Tags: Chic-Basic Hotels / Hotel Toiletries / Hotel Porn / Budget Chic Hotels / → All Tags
The Best Things at Hotels Are Free
Sometimes in life, it’s the little things, and it appears that Chic&Basic hotels in Barcelona and Amsterdam truly gets this.
For starters, their toiletries are funny. (Don’t deny that that soap didn’t make you chuckle.) It could be the crappiest soap you’ve ever used—something that smells like feet and dries out your skin—but who cares?! The packaging is so darn basic it’s unavoidably cute.
Second, the Chic&Basic web site is like free porn! Well, kinda. The site features a photo of two chicks lying in bed together, one with her arm suggestively draped over the other and another with two men and one woman in bed together. How chic!
However, you’ll have to click on the Castellano version of the site to see these suggestive photos—apparently people who only read English are too uptight for these sorts of things. Or, if you’re like us, too immature.
[Photo: Fatty Tuna]
Tags: HotelChatter Reviews / Portland Hotel Scene / Luxury Collection Hotels / Hotel Toiletries / Hotel WiFi / Oregon Hotels / → All Tags
The Nines Wows Us to the Nines
We spent the weekend in luxury at Starwood's Luxury Collection's latest opening, Portland's the Nines. Yesterday we gave you a video tour of the room, now we break down our stay.
Location, Location, Location We were literally in the center of the city. The building itself--the old Meier & Frank Building--has so much history it has it's own Wikipedia entry and it shares the building with Macy's. You can't take the elevator to the shoe floor, though, you have to go down to the street level and walk around the corner. We were walking distance from all the Portland hotspots and could jump on the MAX free city rail from the corner. City views were great--we could see the bridge and the renovations on the historic Pioneer Courthouse.
Atrium view rooms overlook the 8th floor lobby and restaurant. Commenter Delane questions the natural light in the atrium, but we're pretty sure it's natural. If not, it's simulated real well, which might be necessary is inclement climates.
Tags: In-Room Dispensers / Hotel Toiletries / Hotel Amenities / Green Hotels / → All Tags
Hotels Are Searching for Sexy Toiletry Dispensers
Hey there! Remember when we created a guide to Hotel Toiletries? And we listed all of our favorite hotel toiletries, then we asked you to drop in your best hotel toiletry sightings? You do? Ok well, we are really regretting those stories right now.
While we love snatching up the mini-toiletry bottles to take home with us (especially if the products are from Fresh or Kiehl's), we recently learned of something that we didn't even think of once in our toiletry buzz--the amount of waste those cute little bottles create. D'oh.
So it's no wonder that hotels are trying to reduce the amount of waste they produce by using toiletry dispensers. For one, they can call themselves "green" hotels in doing so. And second, using dispensers is actually a heck of a lot cheaper. Ben Bethel the owner of the Clarendon Hotel in Phoenix, says using dispensers means hotels will be spending less money on ordering those little bottles and less money on trying to get rid of the waste.
But the question is: how can you find a dispenser that fits in with the crazy/sexy/cool vibe of a hotel?
Tags: Hotel Toiletries / Lists / HotelChatter Guides / → All Tags
HotelChatter's Guide To Toiletries :: All The Rest That's Fit To Put On Your Skin
Now that we have round up the fabulous Hotel Toiletries in the big hotels chains and in some boutique hotel chains, we are now dropping our toiletry findings for a bunch of random hotels that we have come across.
We had some trouble figuring out how to organize these hotels so we started off by location and then went from there. It's not a perfect or complete list but it's something to build on.
Thanks so much to all of you commenters who wrote in your toiletry sightings! Keep 'em coming.
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