Consider this the summer of soaps.
Equinox’s membership base practically stormed the Bastille, er, shampoo cabinet with pitchforks earlier this year after the luxury gym chain ended its 13-year relationship with Kiehl’s. support Grown Alchemist. TikTok exploded with disgruntled members taking videos and threatening to cancel their memberships over the soap swap—and pouring out a bottle to save the glory days of pumping Kiehl’s Creme de Corps into mini bottles for later use. (We at TPG don’t condone this behavior, but remember that Grown Alchemist is just as luxurious a line of skin and bath products as Kiehl’s.)
But as the dust settled in the Equinox locker room, New York state unleashed its own personal hygiene antics this week. According to the state Department of Environmental Conservation, hotels with 50 or more rooms will no longer be allowed to provide mini bottles of soap, shampoo, conditioner, and lotion starting next year. Smaller establishments with fewer than 50 rooms have until early 2026 to comply with the new law.
This means, depending on where you live, you may see more wall-mounted soap, shampoo, and conditioner dispensers—or at least pretty toiletries bottles.
This also means the lights are dimming in the era of stealing unattended housekeeping carts or, for example, betting on an upgrade to a two-bathroom suite at Hyatt Regency JFK Airport just to have access to the complete Le Labo Hinoki product range. I’m only speaking hypothetically, Of courseWhat kind of person would do that?!
Well, the travel orbit better understands that this is the right thing to do from a sustainability and waste management perspective. What’s more, New York’s law doesn’t impose anything new on travelers: Most hotel companies already is moving to refillable bottles. designed to be kept in hotel rooms instead of small bottles stuffed into guests’ luggage.
Related: Hotel CEOs talk about price hikes, daily housekeeping and mini shampoo bottles
IHG Hotels & Resorts has partnered with Dove parent company Unilever to offer larger-sized amenities across its mainstream brands like Holiday Inn Express and Candlewood Suites. But IHG’s ultra-luxury Six Senses brand has been a leader in the luxury hotel space, moving to larger pitchers instead of small bottles. These days, it’s rarer than not to find small bottles across every major hotel company.
“It’s the right thing to do in terms of waste management,” said Nicolas Graf, associate dean and clinical professor at New York University’s Jonathan M. Tisch Center for Hospitality. “We need to educate travelers about what really matters in terms of sustainable practices in hotels. I think shampoo bottles are one thing, but I think the second thing is probably around buffets and food.”
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Graf is right: The tourism industry can do a lot more when it comes to sustainability and is clearly moving in the right direction.
But when I read about the new law earlier this week, I couldn’t help but feel small selfish sadness for my future guests. The days of having mini bottles of Aesop and Diptyque from luxury hotels around the world are over, folks! (Of course, saving the planet and stopping landfills takes precedence over my guests having access to mini bottles of Santal 33 shower gel.)
Alas, I’m not the only one feeling a little sorry for Le Labo this week.
I granted anonymity to a few travelers to weigh in on the change, and—while everyone understood the sustainability-driven motivation behind the move—there was a similar tone to trying to get one last martini when the final call at one’s favorite bar rings out.
One source from an undisclosed international location bragged that he had 13 small bottles of St. Regis bath products in his checked luggage and hoped to increase that number to 16 after housekeeping ended on the last night of his trip before returning to the United States.
Many sources scoffed and noted that the soap and shampoo basket in my hotel room was amateurish: Some of them hadn’t bought shampoo and conditioner in years. for their entire home thanks to hotel stockpiling. One person was particularly frustrated when she was running low on Fairmont’s Le Labo Rose 31 soap—a personal stockpile last replenished from a stay more than a year ago.
I’m sure most hotel CFOs would be delighted to know that people like this will no longer be threatening to spend on shampoo and unattended housekeeping carts.
But there are more concerns than just the mini-conditioner vultures mentioned above. Others said they were “disgusted” by the hygiene concerns surrounding the idea of wall-mounted soap and shampoo dispensers. While the idea is that only housekeepers can open and refill the dispensers, some people I spoke to said they were not confident in the mechanism. Some said they would just bring their own soap for future hotel stays.
I have seen housekeeping forget to refill an opaque dispenser that is not obviously empty from the outside. This can cause some awkwardness when needing to call housekeeping mid-shower to refill soap and shampoo.
How hotels embrace change
It is not a case of applying a one-size-fits-all approach to sustainability with hotel shampoos and soaps.
Some Hyatt brands, like Hyatt Regency, have required wall-mounted dispensers in showers and bathtubs, while some lifestyle brands, like Thompson Hotels, offer large-format amenities on bathroom counters or in bathroom niches.
Last year, all Hilton hotels were required to switch to larger-size shampoo, conditioner and soap products to eliminate the use of single-use bottles across the company’s various brands.
“This shift has helped us reduce single-use plastics by 50 percent, increase efficiency across our hotels by reducing the need for additional amenities, and enable our brands to offer a wider range of products that meet our guests’ changing desires for world-class, higher-quality brands,” said Anu Saxena, president and global head of Hilton Supply Management. “For example, guests can now enjoy Byredo-branded products across our Conrad properties, Not Soap, Radio at Tru by Hilton properties, or Aesop-branded products at our Waldorf Astoria properties. The feedback so far has been overwhelmingly positive; people really like the products they are seeing in our hotels.”
Marriott International is also transitioning to larger, pump-top bottles at its hotels. The company’s initiative achieved 95 percent compliance at its managed and franchised hotels globally by the end of last year, a company spokesperson told TPG.
“When fully implemented, we estimate that this switch will help prevent approximately 500 million small bathroom bottles from going to landfill each year,” a Marriott spokesperson added.
Attracting guests with fun amenities in large containers can even create a small industry. The Marriott’s Edition brand has a loyal following for its distinctive Le Labo bath products, Which customers can buy online?.
In 2023, Gansevoort Meatpacking NYC in New York City switched from mini toiletries to larger items from Grown Alchemist, the same brand Equinox just switched to at its gyms.
“The alluring scents of Damask rose, black pepper, and sage are so enticing to take home,” says Cesarina Collado, hotel manager at Gansevoort Meatpacking NYC. “If guests can’t live without these toiletries, they can take a bottle home; however, they will have to pay a fee to have them removed from their room.”
Settling down with sustainable shampoo
Of course, some travelers don’t see things the way hotel companies do. Just as Equinox members justify their high monthly membership fees by getting access to their favorite Kiehl’s products, travelers sometimes see small bottles of luxury skin-care and bath products as a perk of paying big bucks for a night at a luxury hotel.
A wealthy traveler I know has bragged to me over the years about how, during a long layover at Heathrow, he once filled an empty water bottle with the wall-mounted Aesop lotion in the airport lounge—much to the chagrin of his husband. In a nod to the hotel industry’s push for more sustainable practices, he told me he’d probably do it again if a similarly luxurious, albeit wall-mounted, bath product appealed to him during future hotel stays.
Obviously, these are extreme examples and I would guess that most travelers will only use wall-mounted or oversized water dispensers.
Some of the recent uproar around luxury hotels and gyms may have more to do with people not reacting well to change than with perceptions of actual quality. After all, Equinox’s new amenity kit partner, Grown Alchemist, is also what’s found in Delta Air Lines’ Sky Clubs—and I’d wager there’s a fair amount of overlap between Equinox members and Sky Club frequenters.
As for me, I only have three small bottles of Le Labo Hinoki left from my last room upgrade at the Hyatt Regency JFK Airport. Sure, part of me wants to throw up in a mourning scarf and sob over the remaining conditioner, but I also realize that most great loves like this are fleeting—and maybe a little delusional.
So instead of turning on some sad Joni Mitchell song while shedding tears over a tiny bottle of eco-unfriendly hair care product, I finally gave in and popped into an actual Le Labo store this week and bought refillable bottles.
After all, it’s all about saving the planet, right?
Are you lamenting Le Labo? Or are you a fan of the push for better sustainability? Get in touch to share what you’ve learned at [email protected].
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