Why does the hotel lobby smell like that?

Vox reader Jane House asks: Why do hotels pump very strong-smelling perfumes into their lobbies and sometimes into their guest rooms?

What we think of as an “excellent” hotel often comes down to a specific location. Sure, it has all the amenities — a luxury restaurant and bar on the premises, hotel room beds with soft Egyptian cotton sheets, perhaps a decadent spa — but beyond that, it should have an irresistible atmosphere that’s both welcoming and sensual, comfortable and yet exotic. .

Scent can help clear this vibration. As soon as you enter a hotel lobby or even a hotel room, you notice an enticing aroma in the air; It’s probably a custom fragrance that hotels waft into the air. While some use mass-market fragrances available to consumers, many use their own signature scents created by a master perfumer.

Fragrance marketing, as the practice is called, is not limited to the hospitality scene but pervades the retail sector. just think Thick miasma of the colon That radiated from every Abercrombie & Fitch store. It’s (usually) a more subtle marketing tool than a giant light-up billboard, bringing back happy memories and changing your mood so you feel more satisfied with a place — which can make you want to stay there longer, spend more money. , book a room again, and recommend the experience to anyone else. Some companies even The smell of spritzing in the office To make going back to the office more enjoyable. In many places we spend time, you are snoring.

What is the psychology behind fragrance marketing?

Scent marketing has been around for decades, with Las Vegas casinos being some of the early pioneers in using it. In the 1990s and early 2000s, however, its purpose wasn’t just to invite a pleasant smell into an otherwise neutral space—it was to prevent a lingering, unpleasant smell.

“There was a time where most resorts were attracted to environmental scents because they wanted to do something about cigarette smoke,” says Jim Redding, CEO of Environmental Fragrance Company. Fragrance Retailsaid. 

A growing number of companies outside of hospitality are creating ambient fragrances for their retail spaces, said Carolyn Fabregas, CEO of Saint Marketing Inc. Recently, Fabregas’ firm helped create a custom fragrance Wayfair’s new Chicago store Which smells like linen and freshly cut grass.

In food and beverage establishments, the focus on smell is instantly understandable: you smell pizza, you think pizza, you crave pizza. Starbucks works hard to ensure that the aroma of its coffee is not spoiled by the food and other odors in its stores— Employees are not even allowed to wear perfume.

For other places, the basic theory is that a distinctive smell becomes something that consumers immediately associate with a brand — our sense of smell is connected to it. The part of the brain associated with memoryFor example, a certain laundry detergent takes you right back to being wrapped in a blanket when you’re sick from school. Using an ambient scent can cement, and improve, brand recognition How well customers remember aspect of a product or service.

A nice smell puts you in a good mood. A 2021 study by researchers from the Barcelona School of Tourism, Hospitality and Gastronomy A trial was conducted in a four star hotel compared guest experiences in rooms scented with lavender and rooms without any scent; Guests in scented rooms reported higher levels of happiness during their stay than those in neutral rooms. Research has shown that an aromatic environment can Make customers last longer At a restaurant (while underestimating the length of their visit), thus spending more money – time flies when you’re enjoying yourself. A An automaker experiment conducted in the early 90s Even spraying specific perfumes on salespeople has attempted to determine whether they would be considered credible, although it is unclear what the outcome of this trial was.

How does the hotel decide on a “signature smell”?

Hotels and resorts spend a lot of time matching their brand image with a signature scent, especially today. (Although it may be very similar to a Popular fragrances.) A trend in hotel design right now is to emphasize how individual a space feels.

“Everything is now hyper-local,” says Lori Mukoyama, a global leader in the hospitality practice at architecture and design firm Gensler. “Gone are the days where we’re stamping out the same brand, exactly the same way, in 50 different cities around the world.” According to Mukwama, having a tailor-made fragrance is key to creating a personalized hotel lobby feel.

“I absolutely feel it’s a logo in the air,” Fabregas said. “It’s a context against which everything else plays.”

For some brands, a signature scent isn’t enough. closed now Mirage Hotel In Las Vegas, for example, two different scents are used for two different locations. In the lobby, it used a buttery coconut vanilla scent, Redding says, to create a tropical theme that matches. Huge aquarium Behind the front desk. “It gives us a sense of warmth and security,” he says. But then the casino used something stronger — a “tropical cocoa mango” — to give it a party-feel that might encourage exciting risk-taking rather than relaxation.

One of the reasons why environmental fragrances are so common in hotels is because it is a place where the perception of cleanliness is sacrosanct. Redding says hotels often tell him they want something that smells fresh and clean, but tend to avoid anything that might remind people of cleaning products. It comes back to how we associate scents with specific contexts — a whiff of lemon pine sole will make you think of a bathroom, or a mop, rather than the luxurious, crisp cleanliness that hotels strive for.

For some, hotel fragrances are an olfactory delight that they want to recreate in their own homes. Several online retailers sell hotel and resort fragrances to consumers — or at least, approximations of their preferred scents — and Redding says that’s the bulk of his business today. But not everyone is a fan of scent marketing. What’s a good or bad smell is highly subjective, and people with particularly sensitive noses may lament not being able to escape a headache-inducing scent.

“That’s what really makes it difficult — that you’re spreading it out in public space without public consent,” Redding says.

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