For decades, checking into a hotel meant finding the same little collection of freebies waiting in the bathroom. Tiny bottles of shampoo, conditioner and lotion. A little wrapped bar of soap. A bigger bar of soap for the shower. Maybe even a shower cap if you were lucky.
Then, seemingly overnight, hotel bathrooms started looking different. One by one, those longtime amenities began disappearing or changing as hotels updated their bathrooms and responded to growing concerns over single-use plastics.
Except one of them never really went away.
And the reason has very little to do with plastic.
By the late 2010s, the word was out – individual states, as well as entire hotel chains, were phasing out single-use toiletry bottles.
Tiny bottles of toiletries had been a part of the traditional hotel experience for decades. But following heavy criticism over single-use plastic, hoteliers slowly began phasing out these individual amenities. As hotels and supplier ran out of the small bottles, they were replaced by bulk items that could be refilled.
And yet, in many hotels, bars of soap remained.
Of course bar soap never came in plastic containers like shampoo, conditioner and lotion did – they typically came in cardboard boxes. But still, refillable liquid soap has got to cost more than individually wrapped boxes of soap. And in an industry where hoteliers want to save money so badly that you sometimes have to ask for daily housekeeping to actually get it, you’d think that bar soap would have gone the way of the dodo, along with the individual bottles.
But it turns out that, despite the extra cost, hoteliers like the individual bar soaps. Here’s why:
A Sense Of Luxury
Some hoteliers say they still use bars of soap because it conveys a sense of separation from guests being at home. Part of the tradition of having a bar of soap ready in the bathroom reminds guests that they’re staying in a luxury hotel and getting a unique experience from what they’d have at home.
A Sense Of Familiarity
On the other hand, some hoteliers think that bar soap signifies familiarity. Their thought process is that a bar of soap makes the guest feel more “at home.” They also think the visuals of a large dispenser right next to the bathroom sink feels less residential.
Making the hotel still seem like a hotel
Some hotels felt that having too many bulk containers made their hotel rooms seem more like a gym. When surveys were sent to guests, the consensus was that guests didn’t want to see multiple dispensers in their bathroom – especially when they were paying over $1000 per night for the room.
Complementary Branding
Still other hoteliers prefer to use their soap as a branding opportunity. Before New Orleans’ Maison de la Luz was sold to Hyatt and re-branded as Maison Metier in 2024, their bars of soap were branded with the Maison logo and were kept in a soap dish made by a local artist that was in the shape of an oyster shell — a staple of the New Orleans experience. Similarly, the bar soap at the Marram, a beachfront hotel on the eastern tip of Long Island, New York, has a woody aroma to compliment the hand-trimmed cedar found in all of the hotel’s buildings.
Not all hotels offer bars
Of course, some hotels have embraced bulk packaging throughout their hotels and you’ll be just as likely to find a liquid soap dispenser by the sink in your hotel room as you are to find it in the shower. But each hotel is different.
What happens to leftover bars of soap?
Still having bars of soap leads to the question of what happens to them after a guest checks out. Happily, many are sent to a charitable organization called Clean The World.
Formed in 2010, Clean the World’s Global Recycling Program helps hotels divert discarded soap and plastic from landfills, turning them into new bars for communities in need. This reduces pollution, conserves water, and lowers the carbon footprint—while supporting global NGOs like The WASH Foundation to improve lives around the world. They partner with over 8,500 hotels worldwide and, since its inception, Clean the World has diverted over 32 million pounds of waste from landfills and donated over 100 million bars of recycled soap.
So, no…hotels didn’t just forget about the little bars of soap.
For many properties, they’re one of the last small touches that still make a hotel bathroom feel like a hotel bathroom instead of your gym locker room or office restroom. Whether it’s about luxury, branding, familiarity, or simply giving guests something they still expect, that tiny bar of soap has managed to survive while its plastic-bottled neighbors have largely disappeared.
And if you’re wondering whether your barely-used bar of soap is headed straight for the landfill after you check out, there’s some good news there, too. Thanks to organizations like Clean the World, millions of those leftover bars are recycled, remanufactured and distributed to people who need them around the world.
Who knew one of the smallest things in a hotel room had such a surprisingly big story behind it?
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