Hotel Refills Toiletries From Ketchup-Style Bottles—This Is Why You Can’t Trust What’s In The Shower

This upscale hotel’s housekeeping cart looks ready to dress a hamburger: red, yellow and white squeeze bottles lined up beside the guest supplies. The red one says “Body Wash.” In the shower, the bottles say Klur. Travel journalist Scott Mayerowitz photographed the setup and compared it to the condiments at McDonald’s. He’s glad the hotel is refilling its toiletries. I’m looking at the same photo and wondering how guests are supposed to know what they’re actually washing with. A post shared by Scott Mayerowitz (@globetrotscott) His follow-up photo on LinkedIn shows Klur Repose shampoo, conditioner and body wash in the shower, in the Clary Sage + Lavender scent. My guess, eyeballing the hallway and bathroom, is the Omni Boston Hotel at the Seaport. Readers familiar with the property can confirm or correct that. A September review documents Klur toiletries there, and Klur supplies Omni more broadly. The red squeeze bottle isn’t literally unlabeled. It’s self-labeled. The bottle identifies as body wash. What it doesn’t show is whose body wash. The contents may be genuine Klur, though it seems odd if it were that it would be in a ketchup squeeze bottle. Best case, this looks cheap. They went to the trouble of selecting a branded amenity for the bathroom, then made the refill process look like the back of a burger joint. I’ve Reported This At Hyatt Hotels, Too In May 2025, I wrote about Hyatt Regency San Francisco’s ketchup-style refill jug. A reader photographed an unbranded squeeze container being carried with housekeeping supplies. Guests could see the dispenser in their bathroom, but couldn’t identify the product supplying it. Then, in December, a reader found condiment containers on a housekeeping cart at Hyatt Place Phoenix Mesa. That cart also had a toilet brush beside fresh towels, which didn’t improve the presentation. At Hyatt’s Wild Palms Hotel in Sunnyvale, California, a reader photographed DRIFT bulk toiletries on housekeeping carts while the guest bathroom bottles displayed Jonathan Adler branding. The hotel advertised Jonathan Adler amenities. When One Mile at a Time followed up in January, Ben reported that the labels had been removed from the bulk jugs, and published new photographs. The hotel was still advertising Jonathan Adler. And at the Suining Marriott in China, management there actually acknowledged swapping out cheaper stuff. A guest found FORMETURE products instead of Marriott’s thisworks amenities. The general manager said the owner had changed products to save money. The hotel denied that the replacement was counterfeit, saying it was a legitimate product with quality documentation. It promised to restore the brand standard, and the guest received 8,000 points. Does This Break Any Rules? Klur’s hospitality products are is sold in bulk refill containers. I’d expect those to be used rather than squeeze bottles. Putting a different product into a Klur-labeled bottle could create a misbranding problem. Handling cosmetics under conditions that could contaminate them can violate adulteration rules. And passing off a cheaper product as the promised brand could also run afoul of Massachusetts law against deceptive business practices. Bulk Toiletries Leave More For The Guest To Worry About I’ve been criticizing this move for years. Buying larger containers can reduce packaging (but they can opt for single use biodegradable packaging too). It also lets hotels spend less on toiletries. I’ve shown a Sheraton’s bulk toiletries sitting beside disposable plastic cups, with plastic water bottles elsewhere in the room. They were surely using bulk toiletries out of an ideological commitment to end plastic use. The refill routine adds opportunities to mix up products or introduce contamination. TA 2023 study of 104 hotel soap dispensers in Germany found bacterial contamination in 70.2% of refillable pump dispensers, compared with 10.6% of nonrefillable press dispensers. Bottles that can be opened can be tampered with, and I’ve found supposedly secured dispensers left unlocked. And housekeeping has to remember to fill them. I once returned to the same room at a Marriott Courtyard a week later and found the bath gel dispenser still empty. It had been empty throughout the previous stay, too. You usually discover that problem after you’ve gotten into the shower. Hotels have also given up something that helped sell both the stay and the toiletry brand. I started using Aesop after staying at the Park Hyatt Tokyo. Taking a little bottle home extended the experience and introduced me to a product I still use. Topics on this page