Bringing the hotel home

Flying Squirrel


MAXIMUM COMFORT—Want to bring Westin’s Heavenly Bed home with you? Don’t worry. You won’t need to use a moving truck. Courtesy photo

MAXIMUM COMFORT—Want to bring Westin’s Heavenly Bed home with you? Don’t worry. You won’t need to use a moving truck. Courtesy photo

With the holidays fast approaching, you might be shopping for the traveler in your life. Allow me to give you some advice on how to obtain the perfect gift and have a good time doing it.

Make a reservation at the nicest hotel you can find. Check in with an empty suitcase. Once in your room, unzip the suitcase.

Now here’s the clever part: Take the sheets off the bed, the toiletries out of the bathroom and the plush terry robes from the closet and stuff them all in your empty suitcase. Voila! Your shopping is done and you get a hotel stay out of it.

 

 

I hope you’re still reading this far—please tell me you are—because this is the part where I say, “I’m kidding!” I’m not seriously advocating you steal the hotel bathrobe. Rather, I’m suggesting you consider buying it.

If you’ve been in a high-end hotel, think Westin, St. Regis, Hilton, Ritz-Carlton, you’ve probably noticed a little sales tag on the plush robe and slippers offering you the opportunity to purchase the robe to take home.

Most of us never have that much room in our suitcase, so the prospect of buying a hotel bathrobe is remote. But thanks to the internet, you can now purchase almost every hotel-room amenity you’ve ever had the pleasure of using while traveling.

Whether it’s a robe, slippers, bed linens, pillows, soaps, lotions, candles, shower-curtain rings, even an entire bed, you can now bring the travel experience home in the form of your favorite hotel amenity.

Start with robes. If you’ve coveted that 100-percent cotton terry velour robe, you can find one at almost every hotel’s website, ranging from $74 to $100. (Just Google “hotel robes.”) You’ll also find other-style robes, including waffle-weave fabric and lighter-weight microfiber styles.

What you won’t find on some of these robes? The hotel logo. What a rip-off, right? If you buy a Hilton or Ritz-Carlton robe, you’ll note in the details section they don’t include the logo. Seriously? The Ritz wants a C-note for its bathrobe but won’t include the fancy lion logo?

Never fear, the Westin and W hotels have you covered (and logo’d.) Purchase their bathwear and you’ll get a logo stitched smartly on the sleeve.

In addition to robes, almost every hotel store also offers bedding and towel sets.

If you’ve stayed in an upscale property, you’ll know the comfort and luxurious feel that comes from a night spent in one of these amazing beds.

At the Westin store, for ex- ample, they offer their entire Ultra Luxe bedding set, including down and feather pillows, pillowcases, 600-thread-count sheets, a duvet, down blanket and bed skirt. Starting at $1,605 for the set, you might not have much money left for traveling, but you’ll certainly feel like you’re sleeping in a Westin.

You can also buy individual sheet sets, all in pristine hotelwhite, of course, with prices starting under $175 a set.

Every hotel store also offers a range of bath amenities, fragrances and candles. If your giftee wants to recapture the bathing splendor of their favorite upscale resort (and you’ve run out of the small bottles you took home), this option’s for you.

You can buy dozens of bath and spa products online, from Westin’s Candle in a Tin ($9) to Hilton’s Rejuvenating Body Oil Blend ($49.50) to the Ritz- Carlton’s Liquid Soap ($26.50).

Most hotels also offer fragrance products that capture the scent essence of the property. Westin, for example, sells products such as room sprays, reed diffusers and scent diffusers, all featuring their white tea, woody cedar and vanilla scent.

Many of these fragrance and bath items would make nice stocking stuffers, which you could of course add to the stocking after midnight, when Santa Claus actually fills the stockings.

If you purchase one of these products as a holiday gift, you may want to include a copy of the receipt in the gift box, with the price redacted, of course. After all, you wouldn’t want the recipient to think you’d stolen these items in your suitcase, would you?

Thor Challgren is a travel writer who lives in Thousand Oaks. For more info and resources on this story, visit loveyourvacation.com/acorn. Email questions to thor@theacorn.com.