Ever wondered why hotels smell so good? Brands spend large amounts of money on designing the perfect scent experience to match their product, with hotels being no exception. In fact, boutique hotels have specialists design signature scents for them, to evoke feelings like romance, energy, fun, or relaxation, depending upon the kind of feeling they want for their guests. Hotels pump such odours into rooms, lobbies, gyms, spas, and meeting rooms, with the goal of adding to the experience.
Why do hotels focus so much on smell?
When you can’t bring a scent home with you, why does it even matter? Also, the smell cannot be shared with anyone, describing how it was. Then, why does the whole thing about smell even matter? Why bother creating custom scents and spreading them with expensive machinery?
It’s all about how smells are processed in the human brain. Human beings are known to detect more than 1 trillion odours! This becomes possible as information feeds from the nose to the cortical areas, to arouse emotions and memories without our awareness. In fact, we all can be influenced by the smell around us, without even realizing it! Scents are powerfully tied to our emotions and long-term memories, helping to create experiences, and also remember them. You may have realized how at times, you may not be able to put a name to the scent around you, but you’d be able to remember having smelled it earlier, or having it to make a powerful effect on your mood and behaviour.
While hotels are more about visual appeal, cuisine, and comfort, a deeper and lasting connection can be made with the guests through the scent within the premises. A signature scent, combined with perfect interior design, lighting, and more, can create the right environment to impress the guests. This is why hotels everywhere are starting to use scent as part of the overall brand experience.
How do hotels decide on a smell?
The magnitude and type of effect a scent can have varies from one to another. Certain scents can evoke a more powerful emotion and mood than the others. This makes it important to use the right scent in the right proportion to get the scent experience one prefers. Scents and proportions need to be carefully and correctly mixed. In the case of hotels, decisions are often based on how they want their guests to feel about the experience. For instance, a hotel with a spa would want a scent that evokes nature, relaxation, calmness, and solitude. Similarly, a hotel for a business traveller would want a scent to encourage productivity and rejuvenation, after a long and tiring meeting or field day.
Scents within a hotel should be lighter, less diluted, and have nothing artificial about them. Scents in bigger spaces should be diffused through the air professionally, either via HVAC or standalone units placed in strategic areas, so that guests don’t feel overwhelmed. For individual rooms, hotels create room sprays or toiletries with their signature scents, so that the scent is renewed every time housekeeping freshens up the room.
Hotels avoid scents that are overly masculine or feminine, since they must find mass appeal. Good choices thus include sandalwood, vanilla, lemon blossom, citrus, cedar, and white tea; while lesser common scents include jasmine, lavender, and coconut. The goal for a hotel is to smell clean and fresh, and blend it into the background; not for making it overpowering. A good hotel will take care of this, and offer you the most pleasing environment; for instance, Kingston Hotel, one of the finest hotels near BIEC, that carefully considers everything from the elegance and comfort, to the room service and best price guarantee!