Nomadic Packages

Travel and amenity sizes see a boost in popularity due to airline regulations.

Christine Esposito, Contributing Editor

By car, bus, train, plane or cruise ship, Americans love—or need—to travel. Whether for business or pleasure, if the trip takes them away from home for more than 24 hours, odds are they’re carrying their own stash of personal care products.  
    
For years, savvy air travelers shoved these items into their carry-on bags. But all that changed last August when the U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) banned all liquids and gels in carry-on luggage. Businessmen had their mouthwash and saline solution confiscated like contraband. Women watched as their favorite shampoo and hair gel were tossed into the security check’s trash.
    
The TSA has since relaxed those rules, allowing flyers to bring all the 3oz. containers of toiletries and personal care products that will “fit comfortably” in a “quart-size, clear plastic zip top bag.”  Known as “311 for carry-ons,” the TSA guideline has forced travelers to use more travel size products and packaging, or risk losing expensive, full size products at the security gate.  

Flight Plan

The TSA’s restrictions didn’t cause a wave of miniature size product launches, but it did put the spotlight on the travel size business, says Paul Shrater, co-founder of minimus.biz, a website that sells only travel-size items, including personal care products such as shampoos, sunscreens and deodorants, as well as food and household items.         

While not a primary focus for most personal care companies, it appears manufacturers have heard society’s call for smaller sizes that can easily be stowed in a carry-on, tucked into a pocketbook, tossed in a gym bag or packed in a knapsack.  Bausch & Lomb, for example, has reintroduced ReNu MultiPlus saline solution in a 2oz. plastic bottle. Frederic Fekkai sells a 1.2oz. Sheer Hold Hairspray to Go and Go Smile touts Touch Up Mini On-The-Go Smile Refreshers in 0.02oz. ampoules.
    
The TSA situation has provided an opportunity for retailers too. Fekkai’s hairspray and Go Smile’s diminutive ampoules can be purchased at Sephora.com’s “airplane approved beauty” section, which features a wide range of skin care, cosmetics, fragrance and hair care products that comply with TSA’s new size restrictions. As a GWP, Sephora includes a free quart-size clear security bag when shoppers select an “airplane-approved” product.
    
The main purpose of travel size packaging, of course, is to let travelers bring their favorite brands to their favorite destinations. But these small size bottles and tubes do double duty, serving as an economical way for customers to sample a new brand.
    
Hair care specialist Ojon is billing its new Mini Restorative Treatment as the perfect option for first time users and savvy travelers. The 1.35oz. supply of this multi-function product—it can be used as deep conditioning treatment, leave-in conditioner or shine enhancer—retails for $21 compared to the full size (5oz.) package which sports a $55 price tag.
    

Sugar Cosmetics’ Zip Kits are wallet-sized kits containing an eye shadow quad, mini lip gloss and mirror.

Industry experts note increased interest in travel or breakaway kits that offer a regimen of products in smaller doses. Among some of the latest kits to come to market include Sugar Cosmetics’ Zip Kits (wallet-sized kits containing an eye shadow quad and mini lip gloss) and Juice Beauty’s Organics to Go, a kit that combines the firm’s best-selling products in sizes that meet federal regulations for air travel. In April, JONATHAN|product will unveil Jet Set, a kit which contains 3oz. products in a clear PVC suedette travel amenities bag, for $38. Zorbit Resources produced the bag, tubes and outer carton.  The bag was designed by Chris DiGiacomo.
    
Pooling together your top sellers seems simple enough.  However, packaging executives say companies need to plan wisely when assembling kits.
    
For example, selecting precisely dosed travel size packaging is critical; even a small miscue could

Kits such as Juice Beauty’s Organics to Go—which combines the firm’s best-selling products in smaller sizes that meet federal regulations for air travel—can be used for traveling or as a brand sampler.

hamper sales of full-size products. That’s just what a multi-level nutritional products company found out when it built a personal care sample/travel kit featuring 2oz. travel bottles. (Customers figured out they could get more product at a lesser price with the travel size kits than with the full-size.) To remedy the situation, the firm turned to Telmark Packaging Corporation—a contract filler that focuses on small size pouches, tubes and containers—which sourced smaller components for all nine products in the kit.
    
“There are a lot of logistics that are involved in small kits,” says Eric Ludwig, president of Telmark. “It seems like a no-brainer, but it can be pretty difficult.”     

Room Service!

An offshoot of the travel size market is the hotel amenities business.  Ever since the Four Seasons placed complimentary shampoo in its guest rooms in the 1970s, travelers have come to expect mini bottles of personal care products in every hotel bathroom.  
    
At the economy level, guests will find the utilitarian bar of soap and a mini Boston Round filled with shampoo. But as you move up the luxury scale, in-room amenities are anything but basic. Hoteliers invest millions annually to give their rooms a bevy of creature comforts ranging from (the now ubiquitous) cable TV to luxury bedding to extensive in-room toiletry products featuring sophisticated ingredients and packaging.
    
“As you get to 5-star hotels, you go from shampoos to conditioners to specialized hand soaps and shower soaps to all kinds of amenities, including Q-tips, cotton balls and everything in between,” says Joseph A. McInerney, president and chief executive officer of the American Hotel & Lodging Association (AHLA) in New York City.
    
According to AHLA’s 2006 lodging survey, 85% of hotels provide branded amenity products in bathrooms. It has become common for guest bathrooms to be stocked with products from large personal care companies, such as P&G and Johnson & Johnson, as well specialty brands like Aveda, L’Occitane and Bvlgari. Starwood Hotel & Resorts—which operates W properties—has taken this a step further. Not only does it stock complimentary Bliss products, it acquired the brand from LVMH in 2004.
    
The key for marketers and property owners is to forge alignment that matches the sophistication level of both brands’ customers. “Colgate-Palmolive and Dial won’t work at the St. Regis,” one industry insider told Beauty Packaging.
    
But not every hotel wants a recognized consumer brand, according to Lynn E. Zingraf, director of

Gilchrist & Soames is now managing Aromatherapy Associates’ guest room amenities program. The line is Gilchrist & Soames’ first stock collection using tubes as the primary packaging.

marketing and product development with Gilchrist & Soames, which provides toiletries to The Greenbrier in the U.S. and the Ritz Carlton in Seoul, South Korea, among other luxury properties. While there has always been a certain level of interest in consumer brands in very high-end properties, she contends it depends on the property. Says Zingraf, “Some want a retail brand, others want a product line that reinforces their own brand, and still others recognize that [our company] is recognized as a high-end brand that provides their property with a certain cache.”
    

Essentiel Elements, from Gilchrist & Soames, features apothecary-style brown PET bottles

And cash too. In 2004, the Amelia Island Plantation in Florida launched a new custom program with Gilchrist & Soames’ Essentiel Elements brand, which features therapeutic grade products infused with botanical ingredients. Guests were treated to the products—housed in apothecary style brown PET bottles with silver metal, screw-on caps—in their room, at the spa and in public areas, and they could purchase them at retail locations throughout the property. The program helped grow the resort’s retail amenity sales from $35,000 in 2002 to approximately $145,000 in 2006.

                
Bye-Bye Bottles?

Whether it’s a bottle of Bliss shower gel at the W or a 2-in-1 shampoo at the Holiday Inn, it’s safe to say 99.9% of all guests have taken home at least one hotel toiletry in their lifetime. (Even Oprah Winfrey admitted she took the soap and shower gel from the Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas during her cross-country adventure with friend Gayle King.)  
    
The problem is, far more half-used products are tossed in the garbage when the guest checks out.  These bottles may be small, but when compounded across the entire lodging market, the numbers are staggering: some estimate as many as ten billion shower amenity packaging pieces are thrown away annually. As a result, there’s pressure to reduce the environmental impact of hotel amenity packaging.
    
One option is to eliminate the bottles entirely by installing dispenser units in each bathroom. Pineapple Hospitality and GreenSuites International, suppliers of environmental products and programs for the lodging market, contend their dispensers eliminate waste and help property owners save money. For example, GreenSuites’ dispensers at the Best Western Executive Inn and Best Western Loyal Inn in Seattle, WA have eliminated as much as 200,000 amenity packages annually from entering landfills, while Pineapple reports that its greenSPA amenities program (which features biodegradable formulations and a dispenser) is saving the 33-room Embarcadero Inn, located in Morro Bay, CA, as much as $500 per month.
    
Dispensers will also be featured in Starwood’s new aloft hotels, which will provide the lodging market with a “stylish” environmentally conscious line of properties (the first of which is scheduled to open in 2008). In keeping with Starwood’s heritage, the dispensers will be filled with bliss products.
    
Is this the beginning of the end for travel size packaging in the lodging industry? While dispensers may become more common in basic hotels and resorts catering to environmentally conscious travelers, they won’t become the norm, say hotel industry executives. What’s more likely is the continued move towards more environmentally sensitive hotel amenity packaging.
    
“Perhaps the biggest single movement we’re seeing is in the interest in green or more environmentally-friendly products,” says Zingraf of Gilchrist & Soames.  “The industry will be increasingly called upon to develop cost-effective packaging made from recycled materials, or packaging that is more easily recycled,” she said.
    
Having forged a partnership last March with Forest Essentials, Inc.—a manufacturer of toiletries that feature environmentally sensitive and sustainably harvested packaging—Gilchrist’s green packaging needs have grown. Luckily, sourcing products has become easier. Says Zingraf, “More and more suppliers are offering ingredients and packaging that are more environmentally friendly or that offer more natural characteristics.”

Lucky Numbers

While “311” continues to be a lucky number for travel size packaging, here’s another appealing figure: 1,079. According to Portsmouth, NH-based Lodging Econometrics, that’s the number of hotels scheduled to open in 2008. If that holds true, the lodging industry will add 131,517 new rooms next year, all of which will have bathrooms in need of shampoo, shower gel and moisturizer. That’s a big opportunity for those tiny bottles.  

Size Matters

In response to increased demand for smaller-sized personal care products, suppliers have created packaging and related items that can help beauty and personal care companies answer the needs of on-the-go customers.
    
The Cosmetic Packaging Group of Union, NJ-based O.BERK Company—which offers many translucent PET and HDPE bottles in 2- and 3oz. sizes as well as a variety of closures—was selected by Somme Institute to provide the bottles, jars and closures in its five-step travel kit called mobile. Housed in a transparent, reusable acrylic case, Somme selected a 2oz. HDPE cylinder bottle with disc cap, a 1oz. polypropylene low profile thick wall jar, a 0.33oz. white glass cylinder bottle with finger tip pump, a 0.5oz. polypropylene thick wall jar, and a 1oz. HDPE bottle with disc cap for the range.
    
Alpha Packaging has introduced a new 100ml PET Boston Round with a 24-400 neck and traditional slim profile that fits right between its 2oz. (60ml) and 4oz. (125ml) sizes. It is small enough to comply with the Transportation Services Administration’s (TSA) maximum volume for liquids in carry-on baggage for domestic air travel, but is also two to three times larger than most amenity-size bottles, according to the company.
    
Suitable for compliance with TSA’s guidelines calling for items to be stowed in clear zip top bags, Qosmedix offers sleek crystal clear gift bags (see photo) that can be used for travel kits as well bath and body gift sets, or promotional items. Four stock options are composed of double polished vinyl with a choice of sizes and closures. The line includes a 10x6x5-inch zipper closure with white piping and vinyl handles, a 8x6x1.5-inch zipper closure with white piping and rope handles and a 6x4x1.5-inch zipper closure.
     
Well suited to deliver a mini supply for travel, Unette Corporation offers the Tear n’ Tuck recloseable tube designed for liquids, creams and pastes. Featuring an easy-open tear top tube, the package’s fold and tuck precision application tip can be tightly resealed. It is available in a wide variety of tip designs, orifice dimensions, package sizes and fills, according to Unette.