Hotels have been hit hard in recent months. With properties around the world slowly starting to re-open, will major chains now abandon plans to eliminate single-use toiletries due to COVID-19?
Hotels Plan(ned?) To Introduce Bulk Toiletries
Prior to the pandemic, major hotel chains announced plans to eliminate single-use toiletries in hotel rooms worldwide.
- Accor – by 2022
- Hilton – by December 2020
- Hyatt – by June 2021
- IHG – by 2021
- Marriott – by December 2020
Hotels have always framed this argument from an environmental perspective. For example, Hyatt CEO Mark Hoplamazian said:
“At Hyatt, our purpose – we care for people so they can be their best – guides all business decisions, including our global sustainability framework, which focuses on using resources responsibly and helping address today’s most pressing environmental issues. Plastic pollution is a global issue, and we hope our efforts will motivate guests, customers and, indeed, ourselves to think more critically about our use of plastic.”
And of course there are cost-savings involved in bulk unless people start draining the bulk containers…
A New Priority For Hotel Toiletries?
I’m going to assume that the environmental goals remains unchanged. But now there is a new goal: health and sanitation.
Protecting health and protecting the environment are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but may be in the case of hotel toiletries.
Advocates of bulk toiletries argue:
- There’s not compelling evidence they are unhygienic
- You can also tamper with single-use toiletries
- Housekeepers have a process for cleaning rooms, and part of that process is checking how full the dispensers are
While opponents argue:
- It’s unhygienic
- It encourages use of counterfeit products
- They’re more likely to be left empty
I prefer individual bottles, but don’t really care either way since I’ll just bring my own.
But can you imagine, especially during a time in which hotels are trying to win back customers and convince everyone their hotels are clean, something like this shared on social media?
Bulk hotel toiletries are the best. Keep saving the world hotel companies. pic.twitter.com/Ix8UoCgqRR
— Richard Kerr (@KerrPoints) November 4, 2019
CONCLUSION
In California, ironically, grocery stores are back to offering single-use plastic bags on a complimentary basis. Reusuable bags have been banned by most grocery stores due to hygiene concerns. It just makes me think California, the first state to ban the single-use of toiletries, will also loosen up that law as well. Hotels may have to decide whether the extra expense of individual bottles is worth the peace of mind it brings some guests.
Great Point, something didn’t think about. Maybe you can check with the chains?
I don’t care for the bulk toiletries. I strongly believe in saving the environment but I draw a line at having to use a dispenser at a hotel. You can never trust what’s in the bottle.
I’m mixed on the switch; thinking back about 10-15 years+ it was typically the lower-end chains that had bulk toiletries in dispensers. I expected at higher-end properties to find custom toiletries that were also available for sale at the hotel gift shop. Lately though I have noticed the switch to the bulk toiletries and I can’t say that I am bothered too much since I bring my own soap/shampoo/etc which I actually bought the specific brand because of it being offered at Marriott Autograph Collection resorts.
Single use bottles are a waste and I wouldn’t be bothered about the switch at the majority of places assuming it was a fairly higher quality product. But if I am going to be at a $500+/night property I will be expecting the full complement of toiletries down to the mouth wash
I look forward to hotels introducing single use door handles, remote controls, light switches and tap handles too.
Last week, the CDC said that transmission via contaminated surfaces shouldn’t be a particular concern.
Businesses have spent the past couple of months trying to mitigate transmission via contaminated surfaces, but based on the CDC’s update, this was a fool’s errand. The only reason businesses would continue with cleanliness improvements is for the *perception* of safety.
Agreed, but the “perception is everything” cliche rings true here.
I love it when liberals can’t agree on what they want more – useless moves that are perceived to be good for the environment, or authoritarian moves aimed at the perceived “safety” amid the COVID.
I still haven’t seen a Trump troll refuse care at an ER for COVID…I certainly wouldn’t want to waste public resources on treating your sorry ass.
I have Medicare which I EARNED through decades of payroll taxes. Why should I refuse care?
OK. So you don’t have to refuse care…. Instead, your care should be limited to disinfectant injections or a prescription for hydroxychloroquine or both, the injections and the prescription.
Reality trumps fantasy every time. It’s amazing how when confronted with actual threats, people seem to forget about the imagined ones.
California’s virtue signalling is hilarious.
Before, plastic bags were preferred in order to save the trees, then suddenly plastic was evil (despite many of us reusing the bags as trash bags, dog poop bags, etc…now those have to be manufactured separately), but now plastic is suddenly virtuous again. Wait, I thought climate change and big oil were going to kill us all?
Plastic shopping bags are not a significant source of plastic in the oceans, nor are single use plastic toiletries. The vast majority of plastic is coming from China and SE Asia, and it’s not hotel toiletries, they are about the easiest item to consolidate and recycle, so feel good measures like this accomplish nothing but increase costs and lower our quality of life.
Oh, and plastic will continue to be produced and used, because every drop of each barrel of oil is always used somehow.
You left VFTW, just have to have you leave LALF and then all is good. Maybe go on a deep hunt for QAnon?
Plastics of all kinds are significant in the oceans, especially bottles and straws. The majority of the plastic garbage ring is in China and Asia because WE have exported our trash to them (originally for recycling, but they don’t do it now).
No one has ever gotten COVID-19 from a reusable shopping bag, yet now no one wants to touch them.
No one will ever get sick from touching a shampoo pump, but that will be the excuse for bulk-haters to have them abandoned or banned altogether. There are rational steps to take to avoid coronavirus transmission, then there is over-the-top idiocy.
Everyone’s takeaway from this crisis has been “reconfirm your priors”.
I don’t like bulk toiletries during my stay.
I like individual ones not only during the stay but at home. I am about finished with my shampoo and not yet finished with my bar soap. If the pandemic lasts longer, which it will, I will run out.
I will miss the bulk shampoo etc… I ALWAYS bring empty shmpoo bottles from home ( full size ones) and fill them up with the bulk dispensers. I take them hone and let the kids use it… I figure if the hotel is going to cheap out, then at least I’ll get a good bit of the crap from them. Eventually when they habe to refill a gallon of the stuff everytime people check out they’ll start to rethink about how much they are really saving.
Sure you do, boomer.
Total BS. Hopefully they bring back the single containers.
With bulk dispensers, the hotels can dictate that the dispenser button is a touchpoint that needs to be cleaned. With individual bottles, the housekeeping staff is going to handle it several times, from stocking to carrying to the room to setting in on the sink. There’s more opportunity for infection (even though it’s likely still incredibly low) from individual use vs. toiletries.
Let Gary continue to worry about ejaculate in the shampoo.
Ridiculous decision. Bulk dispensers are no more risky than single use, not from COVID or other contaminants. Some silly old fossils get their panties in a twist over this issue: but the risk is infinitesimally small.
This is a cost saving measure hotel chains are happy to dress up as virtue signalling and is about as useful as banning plastic straws. Anyone who claims to care about the environment (especially anthropogenic climate change) who eats farmed meat is a hypocrite.
I worked for a few hotel chains for a long time Marriott/Ihg/starwood their is so much waste going on. Sad their is no kinda of recycling at all never seen a recycling bin other than in my back office next to the printer. Tons of half used plastic bottles, soaps and other things. We do have to buy from a limited list of vendors for the hotel supplies, cutting corners will get us a fine. People call guest relations about things like that and we have to respond within 24 hours, they call and send an email! They send auditors often and secret shoppers to find out if something is up. Just by you calling them its cost us over 150 per call. Sometimes we can get the charge back on out monthly franchise bill if it’s out of our control or something stupid. So we very much have to but the real supplies the brand approve or its big fine and mostly likely someone will be fired if caught cutting corners. Sorry for any typos typing on a cell on the train.
It’s very uplifting to watch greedy businesspeople having no option but to walk back their virtue signaling.
There’s no point pointing out bulk haters, because the businesses themselves have used the environment as a crutch in the exact same way to nickel and dime customers. The pandemic revealed the hypocrisy of the whole movement to ban single-use plastics. I agree wholeheartedly with WR2.
All over the world businesses were trying to hitch a ride on the virtue wagon, but not actually doing a proper job, not arranging for alternatives. They do it at the customer’s expense. I can’t help but see the pandemic’s threat to their survival as god’s punishment. They really could’ve been nicer.
It never ceases to amaze me the number of impassioned comments for or against travel size or bulk in hotel amenities. Every points blogger is guaranteed one of the weeks most commented on posts.
There are climate deniers, virus deniers, and now….bulk haters. I am personally looking forward to raiding the maid’s cart for bulk quantities of Le Labo.
Although I am all for saving the environment, I like single use toiletries. I love going to hotels and experiencing something different that I don’t buy at home. It’s like a trial size pharmacy. But I can understand the environmental and bottom line impact of eliminating them.