Hotel bathrobes now have more pizzazz
Chains ditch drab styles in favour of funky patterns to attract younger travellers
Most hotel rooms are a blur, says Maxwell Young. But there is one part of his stay at the Hotel Palomar in Washington, D.C., that he will always remember: The leopard- and zebraprint robes hanging in his room.
“It was like I opened the closet and rays of sunshine poured out,” he said of the bathrobes, which he later raved about on Twitter. (“Snow may have put a crimp in our DC plans, but this zebra robe at @Kimpton Palomar Hotel is really lifting my mood.”)
Young, who works in marketing, spent the rest of his business trip working in his animal-print robes. By checkout time, he’d made plans to buy a similar robe for a friend.
As hotel chains look for new ways to attract younger travellers, bathrobes have become one more way to add pizzazz to an otherwise predictable stay. Gone are the one-size-fits-all robes of earlier decades. In their place: Seersucker, houndstooth and periwinkle blue, all perfectly suited for sharing on social media.
“It’s no longer just about putting the hotel logo on a floppy, loose-fitting white robe,” said Greg Eubanks, vice-president of hospitality at Standard Textile, where robe sales to such companies as Marriott International and Hilton Hotels & Resorts have tripled in the past two years.
These days, he said, the company’s robes have sewn-in belts and pockets deep enough to hold smartphones. They’re slimmer, too, and tend to be shorter.
“For years, we sold robes that were about operational efficiency,” Eubanks said. “These days, guests want to feel special — sexy, even — in their robes.”
Executives at Four Seasons Hotels spent three years fine-tuning the chain’s newest offerings, which are more tailored and less bulky than their predecessors. They also have slimmer sleeves to make it easier to style hair while wearing the robes. (“We know customers are pleased because so many of our robes walk away,” one executive said.)
Marriott has replaced many of its white robes with charcoal grey versions that are shorter and have wider sleeves. And at Hilton — where18 per cent of guests say that “lounging around in hotel robes all day” is their favourite part of being on vacation — lighter-weight resort robes have taken the place of plush terry.
Perhaps the boldest bathrobes can be found in Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants’ 65 properties. For 15 years, the San Francisco-based company has stocked its guests’ rooms with leopard-, giraffe- and zebra-print robes. Now it is going a step further, introducing a dozen new patterns to its boutique properties.
The Hotel Monaco in Philadelphia, for example, now has Rocky Balboa-- inspired hooded robes, while rooms at the Buchanan Hotel near San Francisco’s Japantown come with kimono-style robes. In New Orleans, guests are greeted with seersucker robes. Other hotels carry herringbone and pinstriped prints as well as robes with hoods and shawl collars. “As we developed more unique properties, we thought robes should become more interesting as well,” said Diana Martinez, Kimpton’s design director. “It seems like a small detail, but it makes a big impact for guests.”
Finding the right bathrobes can, however, be a years-long challenge for hotels. The pieces must be durable enough to withstand commercial washing and inexpensive enough to replace frequently. That means knitted fabrics such as jersey and che- nille, which can easily fall apart, are out, said Karen Faul, president of Monarch Cypress Hotel Division, which sells 250,000 hotel robes a year. “Most robes you buy at the store would not withstand commercial washing,” Faul said. “We’re talking intense pressure, high heat, stressful conditions multiple times a week. Even something like polyester you have to be careful with, because it’ll melt if you crank up the dryer.”
Guest robes are washed up to 150 times before they are replaced, she said. Hotels typically pay between $25 and $50 per robe and tend to buy three sets of robes for each room to ensure that they have enough time to launder them between guests.
At Kimpton, a team of six designers oversees the selection and vetting of robes. Once they’ve come up with a prototype they like, they test it by washing and drying it 30 times in a row. It’s a tedious process, executives say, but one that can pay off when customers take notice. Guests often take to Instagram, Twitter and other social-media sites to gush over their robes.
Courtney Doman, a 29-year-old from Austin, Texas, who travels frequently for her sales job, says she has become a hotel-robe aficionado.
“It’s not the defining factor in whether I stay at a Kimpton, but it’s definitely something I think about,” she said.
Her all-time favourite, she added, is a knit grey robe from the Solamar Hotel in downtown San Diego. “It was so soft,” she said. Honestly, “I did consider taking that one home with me.”