Hotel guest amenities — the tools
Choose a format, find out what it really costs per occupied room, compare suppliers, get the switchover right. No brand is named, no result is held back behind an email address, and every tool can conclude “change nothing”.
Seven situations, seven ways in. Whichever question is closest to yours leads to the tool that answers it.
Are miniatures still allowed?
Regulation →Nothing is banned yet anywhere in the EU-27. Placing on the market stops on 1 January 2030, whatever the packaging is made of. The text, the dates and the primary sources — with France as a worked example of a national position that several publications have reported wrongly.
I do not know which format to choose
Format guide →Five formats compared — single-dose, 100 ml, 500 ml refillable, 3 L lobby, bar soap — with a selector by average length of stay, segment and exposure to theft.
I want to know what it actually costs me
Calculator →Cost per occupied room, labour and wasted product included, worked out on your own figures. It runs both ways: single-dose to refillable, and back again.
Does my current choice hold up?
Diagnostic →Eight questions, scored out of 16. It does not judge your format: it judges the quality of the decision that led you to it, including what it would cost to reverse.
I have to choose a supplier
Supplier comparison grid →Fifteen checkable criteria, three suppliers side by side, filled in by you. We publish no ranking — that is what makes the grid usable. The RFP template further down is how you get the answers to enter in it.
I have to change without breaking service
Switchover plan →Five phases over ten weeks, with owners, a 29-point checklist and the failure modes that actually sink a switchover.
I am opening or refurbishing
Pre-opening checklist →Six milestones from D-180 to D+90, two of them blocking. Where the bottle holders are fixed is decided before the finishes go in, not after.
The person doing the sums is rarely the only one who can stop the project.
Decide, fund, explain the decision.
Make the change hold up in daily operation.
Compare, order, secure resupply.
Document it, justify it, put a submission together.
Benchmarks observed on the French upscale market, and stated as such: labour cost per hour varies several-fold across the EU. These are orders of magnitude, not your figure — the calculator replaces every one of them with yours.
€0.40 – €1.40
per occupied room, excl. VAT
The range for bathroom guest amenities in French 4- and 5-star hotels, labour included.
€8 vs €14
per litre, depending on the product
Shampoo or shower gel costs around €8 excl. VAT per litre in bulk; conditioner or body lotion, close to double. What is in the set weighs as much as the format.
70% → 1%
gap between a 1-night and a 7-night stay
Single-dose is handed out per arrival; refillable is consumed per night. At a seven-night average length of stay, the budget argument disappears.
≈ €9,350
a year, on 80 rooms
At 70% occupancy and a 1.8-night average stay — 20,440 room nights — €0.86 per occupied room single-dose against €0.40 refillable.
The gap in percentage terms does not depend on the size of the property — a 20-room and a 500-room hotel save the same proportion. Only the absolute amount changes, and with it how much the subject is worth your time. See the full calculation and the benchmark tables →
Seventeen tools, free, no sign-up. In English; the French set is one page larger.