HOTELMARKETING.COM

Taking home a hotel room

April 20, 2004 |

For years, hotels have quietly made much of their contents available for sale to guests who longed to take home not just a bathrobe - legally, that is.

For years, high-end hotels have quietly made much of their contents available for sale to guests who longed to take home not just a bathrobe but a silver tea service or desk chair - legally, that is.

Yet the last few years have seen a small-scale revolution in hotel retailing. Yes, you still have to contact the general manager, as Mr. Greenberg did, if you want a fiber-optically lighted swimming pool like the one at the Westin Resort on St. John. But standard items, including mattresses, pillows, sheets and duvets, have become widely available from quality hotels the world over. And a growing number of lodging establishments, looking beyond basic room accouterments and souvenir umbrellas, are selling what Ross Klein, chief marketing officer for W Hotels, calls “iconic merchandise that reflects the hotel’s overall life style,” like evening bags, costume jewelry and even lingerie, with not a logo in sight.

An increasing number of hotels provide links to sales operations on their Web sites, like the Beverly Hills Hotel, at [url=http://www.thebeverlyhillshotel.com]http://www.thebeverlyhillshotel.com,[/url] which sells the hotel’s jaunty pink and green hatboxes ($20), jigsaw puzzles ($25) and Sealy mattresses ($1,599 for a queen) online.

A few have gone a step further, supplementing Web site shopping with glossy catalogs and toll-free numbers for orders. Westin, (877) 777-5418, [url=http://www.westin.com/store]http://www.westin.com/store,[/url] offers a brochure of hotel bed and bath products, like mattresses ($1,100 for a queen), Brazilian cotton bath towels ($40) and breakfast trays ($165).

Get the full story at The New York Times

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