When Marisa Coulson, her husband and daughter moved to Majorca from New York in 2019, she packed her collection of designer hotel items, including a sweatshirt from the Sunset Beach Hotel on Shelter Island. a hat from Dunmore in Harbor Island, Bahamas. and an “ancient” sweater fraying at the seams from the Chateau Marmont, a West Hollywood hotel known for celebrity and scandal.
Hotel merchandise “is kind of if-you-know-you-know,” he said.
“When you see someone else wearing something from a place that’s special to you, it’s like you’re in the same club,” said Ms Coulson, 44. “We both love the same thing and know the same place and experienced it. same vibe and I appreciated it.”
Designer clothing and other merchandise is nothing new. And from your corner coffee shop to the local mechanic, slapping a name and logo on a t-shirt or baseball cap and selling them for extra income has never been easier. However, in recent years, some hotels – particularly luxury properties – say they have seen a greater demand for hotel souvenirs, with hats, T-shirts and towels bearing the properties’ insignia becoming sought after among the “stolen wealth”. series.
Whatever the items entail, staying at the properties is not required. “Nothing sells as fast as big hotel merchandise,” said Brett David, who owns Spring Street Vintage, a New York company that sells used hats, T-shirts and sweatshirts from $50 to $140 from places like Beverly Hills Hotel and Chateau Marmont.
“When I get hotel stuff, it goes really fast and I can’t always get it that often,” he said, adding that he had two customers get into a bidding war over a particular Chateau Marmont sweatshirt.
In the club
Desirable items range from elusive — a hat costs 35 Swiss francs (about $40) from the Paradiso Mountain Club & Restaurant at Badrutt’s Palace in St. Louis. Moritz, Switzerland, which in winter is accessible only by lift, skis or snowshoes — to the budget-conscious, like the $18,645 chessboard from the Eden Rock Hotel in St. Barts.
“Branded hotel merchandise shows a level of access,” said Sarah Wetenhall, 46, CEO and president of Colony Palm Beach, which she and her husband bought in 2016. “It shows you’re part of a certain social circle.” Along with popular hotel items already available, which include the Johnnie Brown Baseball Cap ($50), Colony Hotel x Petit Plume Women’s Pajamas ($94) and the property’s signature scented candle ($65), Colony plans this year to sell bags. custom embroidered Saint James shirts and designer toiletries.
Harsch Kumar Sood, a 39-year-old property developer in London, said his collection of hotel equipment included toiletries from the Dean Street Townhouse in London, ashtrays from Le Sirenuse in Positano, Italy, and about seven robes found in his suitcase after stayed at Leela Palace in New Delhi.
“We all take 3,000 photos a day now, but I don’t look back at old travel photos very often,” he said. “Travel merchandise is another way to remember and reflect on how lucky you are to have experienced something.”
No reservation required
The raffle exists even for those who have not been to the hotel. Jeff Lyles, 37, a DJ and event coordinator from Napa, Calif., who works under the name DJ Flamingeaux, often takes merchandise from hotel gigs. This includes coasters from the Peacock Room at the Kimpton Hotel in New Orleans and a sweatshirt for his wife from the 1 Hotel in Miami Beach.
For Mr. Lyles, wearing the merchandise also serves as a walking advertisement for his work. Someone who relates to him for a hotel logo on a hat or sweatshirt “could become a friend and I can introduce someone to my music.”
When Brooke Palmer Kuhl, 46, owner of RSBP, an events and public relations firm in Tampa, Florida, graduated from college more than two decades ago, she began collecting beach towels from luxury hotels, even though she had yet to travel to the majority of them. “I would ask people to bring me one back when they went somewhere,” he said. Towels came, then Christmas tree decorations — “because not every hotel makes a designer towel, believe it or not” — and glasses.
Now, her collection of merchandise (about 50 towels and two Christmas trees’ worth of ornaments) serves as a checklist of places she aspires to go and places she’s finally visited. “It started out as about 70 percent places I hadn’t been and 30 percent places I had, and now it’s probably the other way around,” he said. “Before I went to the Gasparilla Inn in Boca Grande, people would bring me glasses from there. Then I had my 40th birthday there.”
In December 2022, Rosewood Hotel Group launched online merchandise sales for a handful of “pilot properties,” including the Hôtel de Crillon in Paris, Rosewood London and the Carlyle in New York, which sells items such as the Gallery Afternoon Tea Set ( $295) , the Carlyle Baseball Cap ($60) and Bemelmans Bar Cocktail Napkins ($75). Marlene Poynder, managing director of the Carlyle, said the hotel expects its total merchandise sales to increase 25 percent this year compared to last year.
Pamela Benger, 54, founder of pet company Phantom Pooches, is a frequent visitor to the Carlyle. She gave all her loved ones Carlyle-themed candles and knit hats last holiday season, she said.
“Because the property is my home away from home, it means something when I give this gift,” said Ms. Benger, who lives in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, but stays at the Carlyle so often that she named a from her poodles. property. “And it was very well received.”
Other properties, including the Sunset Tower Hotel in West Hollywood, do not sell items online, preferring to offer merchandise in the on-site gift shop or reserve them for guests.
“Not everyone should be able to buy it. It doesn’t make it feel special anymore,” said Jeff Klein, the hotel’s owner. “It’s really for our customers to enjoy.”
In mid-December, the hotel posted on Instagram that new merchandise would be available in the gift shop the following day. The collection, which included sweatshirts and matching sweatshirts with a photo of the Tower Bar’s famous sundae menu and T-shirts with the words “Rude Guests Will Be Eaten Whole,” sold out within an hour, Mr. Klein said.
Since then, items have appeared on eBay, selling for more than double their original price. A sweatshirt, which originally cost $160, was listed for $850.
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