When people think about travel gifts, they usually think of the obvious stuff.
Packing cubes. Passport holders. Travel pillows. AirTags. Maybe a last-minute stocking stuffer for the frequent flyer in their life. We’ve written about plenty of those before, including our list of last-minute gift ideas for frequent flyers.
But sometimes the best travel-related gifts aren’t the things you’d find on a typical “gifts for travelers” list. They’re the things that remind you of a trip, make travel feel a little more like home, or let you bring a small part of a travel experience back with you.
It could also mean toiletries.
Some people get attached to a hotel soap, shampoo, lotion or scent. During the pandemic, we even turned that into a game with “Guess Where That Toiletry Is From”, because apparently, we had accumulated enough hotel toiletries to make that possible.
My wife Sharon has a favorite in this category. She is obsessed with the Red Flower Ocean toiletry products that Virgin Voyages has on their bathrooms. So on our last cruise, I let her use some of our onboard credit to buy what was basically a small suitcase full of shampoo, conditioner, body wash and whatever else she could fit in there.
And if you don’t want to buy your favorite hotel or cruise toiletries, well, it’s still sometimes possible to bring them home with you. Although, as we’ve written before, travel-size toiletries are getting harder to find.
But this year, Sharon got me what might be the most amazing travel-adjacent gift of all time.
The Hotel Amenity That Started It
On our trip to San Juan, we stayed at the Aloft, and there was a Marshall-branded Bluetooth speaker in the room.
I know that sounds like a small thing. Most hotel room speakers are either forgettable, hard to connect to, or feel like relics from the iPod dock era. But this one was different. It had the most amazing sound I’d ever heard from a Bluetooth speaker in a hotel room.
I must have made a bigger deal about it than I realized. In fact, I wrote an entire post about it.
Apparently, Sharon was paying attention.
The Gift I Didn’t Know I Wanted
For Christmas, she found a Marshall portable speaker and gave it to me: the Marshall Emberton III.
At first, I thought it was going to be something I’d use around the house. And it is. It sounds great in the kitchen, the office, the bedroom, or pretty much anywhere else I put it.
But then I realized it might also be a fantastic travel accessory.
The Emberton III is lighter than my iPad, small enough to toss into a bag, and powerful enough to fill a hotel room with music. Marshall says it gets more than 32 hours of playtime, which lines up with how I’ve used it so far. On our trip to Germany and Austria, I was able to stream music from my phone in the evenings, just like we do at home, and the battery easily lasted a couple of nights before needing a full recharge.
That might not sound like a big deal, but it changed the feel of the room.
Instead of sitting in silence, listening to whatever random noises were coming from the hallway, the street, or the room next door, we could put on music and make the space feel more comfortable. It didn’t matter whether we were getting ready in the morning, relaxing after a long day, or just trying to make a hotel room feel less temporary.
Final Thought
I never would have thought to ask for a Bluetooth speaker as a travel gift.
It’s not luggage. It’s not a toiletry bag. It’s not a power bank, a neck pillow, or another gadget that screams “frequent traveler.” But for the way we travel, it turned out to be one of those things that makes being away from home just a little more comfortable.
That’s what makes it such a great gift.
The best travel gifts aren’t always the ones designed specifically for travel. Sometimes they’re the things that remind someone of a favorite trip, solve a small annoyance, or let them recreate a little piece of home while they’re away.
For Sharon, that might be a bag full of Red Flower Ocean shampoo, conditioner and body wash from Virgin Voyages.
For me, it’s apparently a Marshall speaker that started as a hotel room amenity and has now earned a permanent spot on my packing list.
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