Over and over again, research has confirmed that our sense of smell is directly linked to our memories and emotions, both powerful factors in branding. Brands that consumers strongly associate with a positive emotion are successful, generating increased dollar sales, repeat sales and customer referrals. Memory, too, plays an important part of the branding experience, helping customers to identify and recall the brand name as well as specific product features and benefits. In order to strengthen their brands, numerous hotels have enlisted the aid of scent branding.
Just as a logo symbolically represents the company, hotels are appealing to the powerful sense of smell by creating “scent logos,” signature scents for their properties. The custom scents are based on the hotel’s ambiance and the emotions they want guests to associate with the hotel.
For example, the Mandarin Oriental uses a mandarin blossom tea scent to evoke not only its décor, but also its name. St. Regis wants guests feel like they are arriving at a lovely home, furnished by Mrs. Astor. Their signature scent includes roses and sweet peas, Mrs. Astor’s favorite flowers, mixed with a touch of Mr. Astor’s tobacco.
Le Meridien hotels wanted to unify its properties to be of a consistent quality and feel, appealing to creative people like artists, architects, designers, and chefs. Now, upon entering the hotel doors, guests experience a whiff of old books, leather, and wood sweetened with vanilla.
Hyatt hotels scent each of their properties, and take this strategy one step further. For their upscale Park Hyatt brand, each individual location has its own unique scent to emotionally bind guests to the property and distinguish it from others, even within the Park Hyatt family.
Senior vice president of Westin Hotels & Resorts summed it up nicely, “Scent is most closely tied to memory, and if we’re in the business of creating memories and wanting our guests to choose Westin whenever they travel, we have to make a memory link.”[1]
So far, most hotels confine their scent to the lobby areas and casinos. Some sell candles with the hotel’s signature scent in their gift shops, but there are many more applications for scent in hospitality. Technology now exists to make scenting guest rooms feasible. Hotels can also make good use of scented paper to send advertisements to their frequent guests in advance of common vacation times, to awaken the wonderful memories of their last vacation. The results for using scent in hospitality are positive; now we have to expand on its use.
[1] “The Sweet Smell of the Modern Hotel,” Chandler Burr, Travel and Leisure, June 2008
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