During the past couple years, I’ve seen hotels being utilized as a kind of laboratory for sensory branding scientists. It makes sense. Hotels are serving customers 24/7, and mostly for activities that are of a more personal nature. Vacationing customers want a relaxing and special experience, and business travelers need a good night’s sleep. So, to attract and satisfy these customers various needs, hotel design trends are increasingly prioritizing sensory appeal, particularly with fragrance and sound. (See the New York Times article Eau de Hotel.)
Enter the latest twist: Hampton Hotels promoting unscented hotel rooms (see Hotel Chain Unscents Itself). Hampton launched this “Non-Scents” program in response to their own customer survey, which revealed that most customers want their rooms to smell like nothing but fresh air. The program is co-created by Proctor & Gamble’s Febreze “Linen & Sky brand,” which leads one to believe the rooms aren’t scent-free, they’re just scented like “fresh air.” I’ve written them to ask for further details. This isn’t the first hotel-room un-scenting program: recall the advent of “Pure Rooms” last spring — an effort to serve customers with allergies (see Hotels Go Hypoallergenic).
Hampton’s survey begs the question: Do the customers that voted for unscented rooms enjoy the scented public spaces?
How are people reading this in terms of trends?
I’d like to know more about how companies using scent determine the success of the scent — is there a mechanism for customer feedback? Is it based on the “feedback” of sales numbers?
–Max
