HAMPTONS, NY—Whether traveling for business or pleasure, today’s travelers often struggle to pack their essentials for a trip, occasionally forgetting to bring sunscreen or facial moisturizer. To help solve this common dilemma, Travel Beauty, an online tool that sells travel-friendly beauty and grooming products from around the world, has partnered with two hotels in the Hamptons, offering guests an exclusive amenity service.
Beginning this past summer, guests of the Panoramic View Resort & Residences in Montauk, NY, and Ocean Dunes Resort & Residences in Amagansett, NY, had the opportunity to enhance their stay with a custom-curated Travel Beauty travel kit filled with luxury toiletries. Once guests make a reservation, they receive a confirmation email, which includes an option to create their personalized travel kit with products such as shampoo, conditioner, body wash and moisturizer.
Guests can opt to have their kits delivered directly to the guestroom or their home or office address before departure. Travel Beauty’s collection of beauty and grooming products for men and women include skin, hair and sun care, as well as bath, body and shaving and grooming products from high-end brands such as Philip Kingsley, Institut Esthederm, Taylor of Old Bond Street, Heaven Skincare and Neova.
“The hotels were already providing basic, standard amenities, and we thought for luxury hotels, it would be great to provide a custom, concierge service for guests to order luxury amenities,” said Alyssa Barrie, founder and CEO, Travel Beauty. “I spend a lot of time in the Hamptons. When I came across the Panoramic View Resort & Residences, I thought this guest is our audience.”
Travel Beauty targets and caters to a select, high-end market segment. Specifically, Travel Beauty’s customers are women, between the ages of 26 to 65, with a household income of $135,000-plus, as well as metrosexual and openly gay men of the same age and household income, according to the company.
Travel Beauty curates product lines from Europe and Asia, hand-selected by its experts. Travel Beauty markets and sells beauty offerings in travel and full sizes that are currently unavailable or not easily procurable in the U.S. The company’s clients can create customized travel kits across many different brands.
An added benefit of the Travel Beauty kits is the option for frequent travelers to purchase a multitude of products. “It’s convenient for business and leisure guests,” said Claire McCormack, COO, Travel Beauty. “We carry full-sized and travel-friendly products. You can buy small, one-off products or 30-something larger products. If you’re someone who travels frequently, you will have products that could last for more than one trip.”
The Panoramic View Resort & Residences, situated on 10 acres and 1,000 ft. of beach, and Ocean Dunes Resort & Residences, located near the ocean amid four acres of a nature preserve of double dunes, offer a variety of property amenities. But the addition of the customized Travel Beauty kit gives the two hotels an added amenity to distinguish its guest services from competing properties.
“Our kit gives a luxury hotel an opportunity to differentiate by offering an exclusive service to its guests—an extra special luxurious amenity waiting for them,” said Barrie. “I think it makes the guest feel more special and gives them a home-away-from-home feeling. A lot of hotels strive to cater to every desire of the guest, and this is one way to make guests feel extra special.”
Adam Manson, general manager, distinctive resorts and residences, the Panoramic View Resort & Residences and Ocean Dunes Resort & Residences, added, “At our properties, we provide soap, shampoo, conditioner, body wash and body lotion. Many guests will travel with their specific items and, thus, this relationship has been great as guests can have fun and pick new products that they wish to try. The relationship has helped us provide an additional experience as part of their trip that guests have really liked.”
Based on guest feedback, the Travel Beauty kits have been well received at the hotels. “They really love it,” said Barrie. “When people travel, they want to pack small or take as little as possible, and sometimes travelers wind up skimping on their at-home beauty regimen. The Travel Beauty kit is an added luxury, which gives the guest a more convenient function than running to a drugstore.”
One of the most unexpected aspects of the partnership with the two hotels in the Hamptons has been anticipating guest preferences. “We expected people to buy basic things like shampoo, conditioner and body wash, but we also saw that people were buying things like upscale luxury products [such as]face masks and under-eye masks. We would venture to guess that when guests are on vacation, they would like to try something new. People are ordering specific luxury items that we didn’t expect.”
Travel Beauty also offers the services of skin- and hair-care experts who provide professional advice and tips on its website. They include Yasmine Djerradine, skin-care expert; Philip Kingsley, hair and scalp trichological expert; and Mary Beth York, makeup expert.