Amenity guide for boutique hotels

Start with the story, not the catalogue

Most boutique owners begin by browsing products. Begin instead with three words that describe the stay you want guests to remember, for example "quiet", "botanical" and "unhurried". Every amenity decision can then be tested against those words. A loud, sugary fragrance fails "quiet" however pretty the bottle is.

Write the three words on the first page of your purchasing file. When a supplier sends samples, put them next to the words and ask which sample you would be proud to find in your own guest bathroom.

A practical test: cover the logo on any sample and ask three colleagues to describe the hotel it belongs to. If their descriptions are far from your three words, the sample belongs to another property.

Choose the scent before the container

Scent is the one amenity guests comment on without being asked. For a small property, a single fragrance family across shampoo, conditioner, body wash and hand wash looks deliberate. Mixed fragrances in one bathroom look accidental.

• Test every candidate on skin and in a damp bathroom, not from a paper strip.
• Check how it smells after a hot shower, when steam changes a fragrance noticeably.
• Avoid anything that fights with the room itself, such as the lobby diffuser or the linen spray.

If you want a scent that belongs only to your property, read about a signature fragrance before you commit to a stock one.

Pick a format that fits your size and your look

Boutique hotels usually choose between three formats. Miniatures photograph well and feel generous, but create the most plastic waste. Wall dispensers look tidy and cut waste, but must suit the bathroom design and be tamper-resistant. Refillable counter bottles in glass or heavy plastic suit design-led rooms where wall fittings would look clinical.

For a room count under 40, a mixed approach often works: wall dispensers in the shower, a small number of refilled counter bottles at the basin. See the range of refill systems for how the bulk side works.

A worked example: 24 rooms

Illustrative figures only. Suppose a 24-room hotel runs at 70 per cent occupancy with an average of 1.6 guests per room and a 1.8-night stay. That is roughly 24 x 0.7 x 365 = 6,132 occupied room nights a year, or about 9,800 guest nights.

If each guest uses part of a miniature set per night, the miniature count runs into tens of thousands of bottles a year. Wall dispensers with refills turn that into a few dozen larger containers. Ask your supplier to run your own occupancy through the same sum before you decide, as the answer shifts the budget as well as the waste.

Also ask what happens to the sum if occupancy rises by ten points in peak season. Boutique hotels often have strong weekends and quiet midweeks, so an annual average hides the real pressure on stock during busy periods.

Small touches that carry the brand

Boutique guests notice details that large properties ignore. A few worth considering:

• Slippers in a fabric and colour that match the room palette. See guest slippers for options.
• A hand-written style card explaining the scent and where to ask for more.
• A single well-made soap rather than three small ones.
• Consistent labels, in your typeface if possible.

Each is cheap relative to the room rate, and each is visible in photographs guests post.

Mistakes boutique hotels make

The usual errors are predictable. Choosing amenities that suit a different hotel, such as copying a luxury chain look without its volumes. Changing supplier every year, so the scent never becomes familiar. Under-ordering and then substituting a different product mid-season. Forgetting the housekeeping trolley: if the format is awkward to restock, staff will cut corners within a month.

Run a two-week trial in three rooms and ask housekeeping for their honest feedback before you sign off.

Another trap is photographing the bathroom for the website before the amenities are final. Guests arrive expecting what they saw, and a mismatch in bottle colour or label looks careless. Finalise first, photograph second, and keep a sample set in the manager's office for reference when reordering.

Lastly, keep notes on every guest comment about scent, good or bad. Over a year they give you a more reliable view than any one opinion in the meeting room.

Budget and phasing

You do not have to change everything at once. A sensible order for a small hotel is: first the products guests use daily (shampoo, conditioner, body wash, hand soap), second the container format, third the extras such as slippers and kits, and last the branded packaging. Each stage can be paid for from the saving or the goodwill created by the one before it.

Agree a yearly amenity budget per occupied room night and review it every quarter. Keep a simple sheet showing units bought, units used and units left. Boutique hotels that track this for even three months usually find that two or three items account for most of the cost, and that is where negotiating effort pays off.

When you have shortlisted, ask for samples and run the three-room trial.

Questions on this topic

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Looking for supply? See Hotels & resorts, browse the product range or request samples.