Boutique Soaps Are a Win-Win For Your Hotel:
For my birthday I spend the weekend up at the Wickaninnish Inn up in Tofino, Canada. It’s about as far away from civilization as one can get.
I noticed that the hotel used these large soaps. They were a far cry from the little tiny ‘hotel soaps’ that comedians frequently make fun of hotels for.
The soaps also had different fragrances: the bathroom sink and the shower soaps were different scents. Both were amazing, natural, organic soaps that were made by a local artisan. And of course, the hotel also sold these soaps if you wanted to take some home with you (the soaps are in the picture below).
Where Hotels.com Coupons Can Help.
What does Hotels.com have to do with this? Sometimes they will let you buy accessories for particular hotels from their own website. So next time you book a room with Hotels.com you can see if there are ‘extras’ that may include cool items like artisanal soaps or a last-minute travel savings promo code.
Artisan Soaps Support Your Local Community and Enhance Your Guest’s Experience….
Why Use Local Artisan Soaps?
Those little-tiny soaps may be the stuff of comedy legend, but they are also cheap. They cost nearly nothing for us hotel owners to make. So why bother paying more for local artisans? Here’s some reasons why:
- It creates a unique experience for your hotel guests. They won’t remember the tiny soaps, but seeing these unique looking, unique smelling soaps will instantly make his/her experience at your hotel stand out.
- People love a story – usually these soaps are made from local ingredients and come with a story that you can enclose in a small card in your hotel room. People love these stories, and love sharing these stories with their loved ones as they give them gifts. Which brings us to the next point:
- You can sell them – you can sell them at the hotel desk, and on your website. People are always scrambling for gifts to bring back to their family. No one buys little tiny hotel soaps to take back with them. You have a new revenue stream!
Where to Find Artisan Soap Makers?
After this trip I went home to try and find some local soap-makers in and around Chicago. Unfortunately this was a difficult process: sometimes local artisans are better at making their products and not so much marketing their wares on the internet. But I still found some neat tricks to help you.
- See if there’s a local soap makers guild. This may sound weird, but there are dozens of soap makers guilds with all the info you need to contact artisans in your area. Examples include the Ontario guild, and the Illinois guild.
- See this list of the top 50 soap making blogs. – Maybe some of these soap makers come from your area and you can contact them to see if they’d like to have their soaps in your hotel.
- Check Etsy – Etsy is the mecca for home-based artisans that make jewellery, crafts, and yes: soap. Look at highly rated soap makers there and see if anything peaks your interest. You can even incorporate the Etsy store onto your hotel website (you can become an etsy affiliate and make money that way).
