Ten Best Hotel Toiletries

Those tiny little bottles can make or break your day when you’re on the road.  Find one you like — especially in these days of not checking bags — and they’re enough to make you check into a hotel just for the shampoo.

Plus, stealing from the housekeeping cart is rampant.  Here’s the best of the best, as discovered in a recent informal survey.

1. Sherry Richert Belul of SimplyCelebrate.net says, “Twice I’ve stayed at hotels and then ran out to buy the toiletries that I had tested during my hotel stay.  The first time was at the Hyatt Regency Huntington Beach.  They had this amazing H20 shampoo, conditioner, and lotion that I still use to this day.  The other was at the Orchard Garden Hotel in San Francisco.  They had samples of MD Skincare products.  Woohoo.  I loved those products.  And was amazed when I went to buy them and found out how expensive they were.”
2. Heather Murphy Chandler loves Arizona Banff Caribou Lodge & Spa.  “The in-room soaps were handmade aromatherapy soaps from the Rocky Mountain Soap Company,” she reports.  “They were so wonderful that I stopped at the soap store in town and stocked up. Subsequently, I have ordered more soaps through the website.”
3. Many said the toiletries at the W Hotels were tops for the miniature Bliss spa products they provide in the rooms.
4. Alan Guinn favors Hyatt Place Hotels.  “They have the most amazing Aveda Rosemary Mint Shampoo. Although I don’t have much hair left, what I do have deserves the best so I went out and bought a bottle.”
5. Jane Angelich, CEO of Supercollar.com just returned from the Four Seasons in Punta Mita, Mexico with a selection of L’Occitane products.  “The soap, body lotion, after-sun balm, shampoo, and conditioner are a standard part of the Four Seasons’ bathroom set-up and match the five-star facility that housed them,” she says.  “When I run out, I buy more because they’re fabulous, or I use it as an excuse to go to another Four Seasons!”
6. The Pezula Resort Hotel and Spa in South Africa offers Maruwa, a Pezula Spa Therapy range of face and body oils, exfoliators, lotions, and body washes.  Says Pezula Hospitality Director Russel Binks: “The range was developed and manufactured locally to extremely high standards and is of a very high quality.  It is very African and reflects the sea and the forests. The products have a fresh forest smell and a velvety feel of the base ingredients.”
7. Boston’s Liberty Hotel, a converted jail from the 1850s, has much of the prison’s original architecture and feel – but not in the bathrooms.  Every bathroom in the Liberty is outfitted exclusively with products from Molton Brown, a 35-year old English company.  However, as the Liberty uses dispensers, not travel-sized bottles, guests can’t squire them away in their suitcases.
8. Lori Lenz of Biscuit Media Group says it’s no contest.  “Sheraton has Bliss shampoo, conditioner and lotion in mandarin and mint, and WOW, it’s amazing. I’ve bought it, and I’ve emailed Bliss several times asking them to carry it in their stores, but they don’t.  I’ll choose a Sheraton over other hotels, just because of this Bliss stuff.”
9. This is a bit different, but still fits the bill.  At Las Ventanas al Paraiso in Los Cabos, Mexico, the housekeepers create a personalized sewing kit for each guest.  They look at your wardrobe then put together a kit of at least three pre-threaded needles in the predominant colors of your clothing.
10. One Ocean Resort Hotel & Spa in Atlantic Beach, Florida, provides guests with luxe H2O products: Sea Marine Revitalizing Shampoo, Marine Collagen Conditioner, Sea Salt Body Wash and Hydrating Body Butter made from green tea.

BONUS ENTRY: Just one more, I couldn’t help myself:  At the Smith Fork Ranch in Crawford, Colorado, guests find full-sized tubes of Leroux Creek Spa Vine Therapy products in the bathrooms. Made from red wine and grapeseed, the company’s motto is “Food for the Skin.”

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