‘It’s Not A Silver Bullet’ Say 3 Brands Who Are Hotel Guest Amenities

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Some brands have been fortunate enough to secure a lucrative marketing opportunity: having their products featured as guest amenities in hotels. While there are advantages to this arrangement — most notably providing a means for potential customers to experience the product while also receiving payment for inventory from the hotel chains — it does not necessarily create immediate success in other sales channels.

I spoke with three brands who have a strong hotel amenity business in addition to online sales channels to learn how they got their start, how dependent their brand is on the amenity business, and misconceptions about the business model.

Pharmacopia

Disclaimer: Pharmacopia is a client of my employer, Acadia.

Pharmacopia, a pioneer in the aromatherapy and clean beauty realm has grown from a brand of products made with plants from the founder’s garden to one of the top five hotel amenities brands in the world.

The company was struggling financially in 2009, when a lifeline appeared in the form of Hunter Amenities International, a supplier of hotel amenities and guest supplies. Hunter had been searching for a personal care brand that had clean ingredients and addressed the emerging trend toward “better for you” products.

Pharmacopia entered a licensing agreement with Hunter, whereby Hunter manufactures the products, brokers the relationships with hotels, and pays Pharmacopia a royalty on sales.

Pharmacopia’s CEO, Andreliz Bautista McGlade, says that this has proven beneficial for inventory management and operational efficiency, allowing Pharmacopia to focus on other aspects of the business.

“The hotel amenities royalties that we were getting was allowing us to fund our business, and we didn’t have to go and find investors,” said Pharmacopia’s founder, Lisa Levin, in a podcast interview. “It was like a whole different business model that we stumbled upon.”

Today more than 500,000 guests a day try Pharmacopia products in global hotel chains, boutique hotels, cruise lines, and resorts. Customers began asking to buy the products during their stay. This customer demand prompted Pharmacopia to relaunch their Aromatherapy Collection through e-commerce – initially on AmazonAmazon” data-type=”stock”>
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and then a DTC (direct to consumer) website, Pharmacopia.net.

But it isn’t always easy to get consumers to make the leap to buying a full-sized product after sampling it in a hotel room. For one, many hotels have moved away from providing sample-sized amenities that guests often take home and act as a reminder of the brand.

Pharmacopia has tried various ways to target potential guests, such as geo-targeting Amazon customers in the same vicinity as hotels where their products are used. McGlade says the company is still finding the right marketing mix that effectively converts hotel amenity users into direct consumers without excessively draining resources.

The company’s next growth strategy is to expand to international markets. This is a goal that most other brands have to back up with extensive brand awareness campaigns, but Pharmacopia’s existing presence in these markets through its hotel relationships could open up a significant shortcut.

MALIN + GOETZ

MALIN + GOETZ is another founder-led brand that was in an emerging category at the time it was picked up as a hotel amenity.

“20 years ago, the concept of a gender-neutral brand proposition was very unique,” says Isabelle Pierre-Emile, MALIN+GOETZ Global Marketing Group Director. “Between that, the design caliber and quality of the products, it naturally lended itself to be a very interesting opportunity to offer amenity products that would be flexible to suit all genders.”

Pierre-Emile says that the brand does not consider Amenities as a sales channel, but as a marketing platform. “The revenue we make from our amenity partners is not the key driver of our presence in this channel,” she says. “For us as a true lifestyle brand, it gives us an opportunity to be visible where our core consumer or potential consumer is present.”

Instead of revenue, the brand’s goal with the amenities business is the quality of properties where they are present. Pierre-Emile notes a positive correlation between amenities and the larger business. “The number of properties keeps expanding as we grow geographically. There are more similarities in footprint between amenities and our distribution.”

One challenge that Pierre-Emile calls out with this business model is the preservation of our brand equity through the consolidation of hotel groups. Hotel industry analyst GlobalData found there were 84 M&A deals announced in Q4 2023 alone.

Pierre-Emile’s advice for other brands seeking partnerships with hotel brands? “Don’t go in it for the revenue, treat it as a marketing channel not as a sales channel.”

down etc

Sheets, pillows and bedding manufactured by down etc are used by millions of guests every day, the company estimates.

down etc’s founder first started selling to hotels, casinos, and cruise ships over 20 years ago. “We’re in the problem-solving business,” the company said in a statement. “We’ll even design and manufacture new concepts for clients to win the business if it serves their needs and puts us in a position to be on the vendor side and earn trust for future opportunities.”

But down etc has a challenge that personal amenities don’t – visual branding. While Pharmacopia and MALIN + GOETZ’ brands are front and center while using the products, bedding does not have the same visual advantage.

Still, customers manage to track the brand down, and an internal survey from the company says that about 60% of customers discovered the brand through their hotel stay.

“Most of our Amazon or DTC customers discover down etc either through a personal referral from a friend or because they had an amazing night’s sleep as a hotel guest and did some research to find us,” the company said.

“And when clients do the work to research a product they love – the value is so much greater when they discover the secret to hotel-quality products at home is from down etc. This leads to passionate clients who become lifelong customers who also provide strong personal referrals.”

The company’s DTC site and Amazon presence is growing, but hotel and hospitality partnerships remain the foundation of the company in terms of its sales volume. Still, that does allow millions of people to experience the brand every day.

“We love solving problems at a large scale, and this business model allows thousands of people to sleep with us every night,” the company said.