Buying Your Favorite Hotel Furniture

In January, 1994, my house in Los Angeles was destroyed by the massive Northridge earthquake. It had to be bulldozed.

And I had to start…from scratch. That was the bad news. The good news, is that I had an idea of how to make my new house into a hotel suite….home.

I travel more than 400,000 miles a year. That’s not just a lot of travel – that’s a lot of hotels. And as I thought about what I wanted in my new house, my points of reference were the memories of hundreds of hotel rooms around the world.

After all those nights in all those hotels, it quickly dawned on me that what I really wanted in my house was the best of what I had experienced in furniture, equipment and design in all of those hotels.

Slowly, then surely, I began to make phone calls around the world, and much to my pleasant surprise, I discovered that – for a price – everything in every one of the hotels I had visited was for sale. Without realizing it, I had already test-driven my house. And now, it was just a number of phone calls and emails away.

Without realizing it, I had started a trend. I wanted the king size bed from the the Four Seasons in New York (around $2000) , the bathroom window from the Princeville Resort in Kauai, the bathtub from the Peninsula in Hong Kong, a toilet like the one in Tokyo's Park Hyatt, a pool like the Westin Hotel in St. John, and even a sink like the one in the presidential suite at Caesar's Palace. Done.

When I boasted to a well-known female talk show host about my bed, she ordered 20! (She’s got a slightly larger house….) Soon after I got the shower head from the legendary Savoy hotel in London, a store in California started marketing them.

And now, 13 years later, many hotels have become profit centers of design and innovation – for home applications. MORE...

[[BREAK]]

Some hotels even have catalogues of special items for sale.

The Westin Hotels at Home catalog offers items for beds, baths…and dogs. Customers can use their Starwood Preferred Guest StarPoints to purchase items from their hotel room. In fact, Starwood has sold more than 35,000 of its Heavenly Beds to date. And yes, there’s now even a heavenly bed….for dogs. After introducing their signature White Tea scent in hotel lobbies, guests started clamoring to purchase the scent, so the chain developed its own home fragrance line.
(877) 777-5418, www.westin-hotelsathome.com

Post Ranch Inn in Big Sur, California sells its mattresses, bedding, handmade soaps, and bath accessories, as well as more alternative items like a fleece hoodie, a hemp baseball cap and original sculptures. And some of the even more unusual requests? An iron frog pulling a snail shell that holds teaspoons and pewter soap dispenser. One of their bestsellers is an iron matchholder /striker that is placed on the fireplace mantels, and rock candleholders, carved from Big Sur granite. Hotel execs were a little confused when guests asked to purchase the fruity scent in the room, until they discovered that the source was probably the citrus-based wood polish used in the room.
(831) 667-2795, www.postranchmercantile.com

Overseas, a number of hotels – including the Savoy – have stuff for sale. In St. Perersburg, every guest room inside the Grand Hotel Europe features original paintings by Russian artists. Every one is for sale. Needless to say, the “exhibition” rotates, as the in-hotel gallery not only handles packikng, but ships your paintings home tax free.

Closer to home, the Hilton Garden Inn, sells its Serenity Mattress Collection, which tops off at more than $2,000. They’ve delivered these mattresses to an island off the coast of Maine as well as five of them to fill a house in Romania.

Hampton Inn’s Hampton at Home program offers the Tranquility Nights mattress and box spring, as well as numerous pillows, beds, bath, lap desks, and even an alarm clock.
www.hamptonhomecollection.com

The Arizona Biltmore is home to six “Biltmore Sprites,” slender statues of spirits that were conceived in 1914 by sculptor Alfonzo Iannelli for a Frank Lloyd Wright project. In fact, these sprites have been called “the lost children of Frank Lloyd Wright.” The Biltmore sells 12-inch replicas for $125, and a 6-foot sprite for $3,000.
www.arizonabiltmore.com

At the Ritz-Carlton Grand Cayman some guests buy the entire table setting at the Periwinkle restaurant -- the plates, placemats, cutlery, even the little flowerpot in the center…
(345) 943-9000, www.ritzcarlton.com/en/Properties/GrandCayman/Default.htm

If you see anything you like at the Marriott, you can probably buy it. That includes the Marriott Bed, a line of bath and spa products, their exclusive Red Lamp. But the most popular item: the Kashwere Chenilla Chaise, which costs $1,795.
www.shopmarriott.com

Even Best Western has gotten into the act. At www.shopbestwestern.com, you can find NASCAR-themed items like a bed-in-a-bag and shower curtains, as well as unusual items like a 22-piece picnic set backpack and a garment steamer. The Best Western Merry Manor in Portland, Maine now sells the in-room Human Touch electronic massage chairs. At The Best Western Merrimack Valley in Haverhill, Massachusetts the big seller is a low-priced surprise: acrylic cotton ball/cotton swab holders -- $7.95. The Best Western Salmon Rapids Lodge in Riggins, Idaho sells original photographs of the Salmon River by longtime resident photographer, Frank Mignerey, and specially-designed light sconces that features two fishes swimming across a wave.
www.shopbestwestern.com

Kimpton Hotels’ “Kimpton Style” program allows guests to purchase traditional items like the mattress and boxspring sets, down comforters and feather beds, as well as more unusual items like the hotel’s signature animal print robes and recycled glasswear.
www.KimptonStyle.com

Last but not least, the W Hotels store sells items that were designed exclusively for the hotel chain, including the Bluwick Candle, the Lauren Merkin W Hotels Exclusive Evening Clutch (it’s a red purse), and $1,800 Ole Mathiesen watch, the erotic Tom of Finland book, the kinky Mile High Mini Kit that includes a lipstick mirror, a mini-massager, two condoms and a bottle of lubricant, but no, the hotel will not ship Viagra.
www.whotelsthestore.com