Yes, you can take home the toiletries offered in your room, but did you know you can also purchase them after your trip as well? Bring back the experience of your luxury hotel room by buying the same shampoo, sheets, and even pillows that were offered at your hotel. Some budget brands may not be worth investing in after you trip, but the following are some of the most sought-after:

• Le Labo - Park Hyatt and Fairmont Hotels

• Verbena - Hilton Hotels

• Davines - W and Aloft Hotels

• Paul Mitchell - Marriott Hotels

• Farmhouse Fresh - Virgin Hotels Las Vegas

When it comes to the bedding, Sleep Foundation has rounded up some of the best-rated pillows you can find on your travels:

• Saatva Down Alternative Pillow

• Brooklinen Down Pillow

• Boll & Branch Down Alternative Pillow

• Pacific Coast Hotel TRIA Down Feather Pillow

Music Makes the People Eat

Madonna sings that music makes the people come together, but the truth is that the music in restaurants is intended to make the people eat. Studies have shown that loud music might not only influence what you order, but how much you order. Loud music (around 70 decibels), gets people to order less healthy food, and more of it. Restaurants use that to their advantage and crank up the tunes to get you to spend and consume more during your meal.

The Quick Clean

Did you know that many hotels don’t clean their rooms daily? In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, in 2020 scheduled cleanings were reduced to avoid unnecessary contact between guests and staff. Rooms would be cleaned once vacated, following the sterilization guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

While this shift in cleaning routines may be what guests prefer, it causes more stress for hotel staff. Housekeeping ends up finding themselves with just 30 minutes to completely clean a vacated room before the next guest arrives. 

Reducing cleaning services isn’t new to the pandemic, however. In an effort to save money, hotels have long offered guests the option to skip daily cleaning. Reusing a towel multiple days in a row was touted as environmentally friendly and guests could not only feel good about reducing water consumption, but they could earn reward points with the hotel as well.

With many hotels still experiencing low capacity, reducing cleaning costs helps them survive the disruptions to revenue. It’s yet to be seen if hotels will go back to offering daily cleaning services for guest rooms when travel resumes pre-pandemic levels, or whether they may instead employ someone like these commercial cleaning services in Omaha, NE to come in and do a good, deep clean once a week and do only the very necessary cleaning in-house in between these visits.

Going Fancy for Forbes

There’s a lot of talk that if a person is dining alone in the hotel restaurant, they’re an inspector for Forbes Travel Guide (responsible for ranking hotels). If a guest arrives and peppers the staff with questions, or makes use of every amenity possible, management may assume the guest is from Forbes and offer the best service. So, if you’re looking to be treated well on your next trip, travel alone and ask a lot of questions about the property!

Travel Agents Can Save You Money

If you’re worried about paying extra fees when booking with a travel agent, worry no more. There’s a misconception that all travel agency make their money by charging fees to cover their own overhead. In reality, travel agencies usually get paid by the destination (aka suppliers), not the guests for whom they book.

You could think of it as travel agencies purchasing vacation packages in bulk from suppliers at a discounted rate. They then sell the vacation package to customers at a retail price point. When the vacation is over, the suppliers pay the travel agency a commission for booking the trip.

Besides cost, booking with a travel agent can offer additional benefits, like customer service perks. If you have any questions about your trip, or problems while traveling, you know you have one person you can turn to who will be your advocate and help make things right. You won't have to spend precious vacation time on the phone with different companies (hotel, rental car, theme park, etc…) sorting things out yourself.

Hotels Recycle

Just because you’re traveling and taking a break from real life doesn’t mean you have to take a break from recycling. Many hotels do offer recycling programs, whether they manage their own in-house or hire it out to a third party that will manually sort through trash and filter out recyclables. Western Elite is one such company that puts on emphasis on responsibly disposing of trash and recyclables, which you can read about HERE.

You may not see recycling bins in your hotel room, but you should look for them in common areas indoors and out. Hotels often separate recyclables into biodegradable and nonbiodegradable categories. Since up to 75% of hotel waste is biodegradable, it can be used for composting locally, which reduces waste and greenhouse gas emissions in landfills.

For nonbiodegradable waste, hotels often send it out for recycling.To reduce how much waste they’re producing, many hotels are cutting down on single-use products and instead are investing in reusable materials or those that can be composted or recycled.

Interesting Facts About the Hospitality Industry

The most expensive hotel room in the world is believed to be at Hotel President Wilson in Geneva, Switzerland. The Royal Penthouse suite can run between $61,000 and $84,000 per night.

According to the Guiness Book of World Records, the oldest hotel in the world is Koshu Nishiyama Onsen Keiunkan in Japan. It’s been run by the same family for 50 generations for the last 1300 years.