Ever Wondered Why Hotels Don’t Provide Toothpaste?

You check into a nice, comfy and serene hotel, leaving behind the helter-skelter of a busy life determined by productive outcomes at work and driven by tight deliveries and timelines.

The first thing you do upon stepping inside your hotel room is to draw open the curtains, put on some light, select your favourite tracks on the playlist and hit the bathroom.

What does your mind crawl onto next?

You see a signature collection of bespoke toiletries, among them- a perfumed body wash, a scintillating yet soft soap, something of a jasmine-like aura, or maybe even rose. There’s a wonderful air-spray along with a branded cologne kept on the sack just above the wash-basin exclusively for guests’ intimate comfort.

The bathtub is spacious and snug and you feel you should just jump into it along with a glass of wine perhaps. So you dial in the room-service and order yourself a nice glass of white wine. But how about a little mouth wash.

As you spring toward the wash-basin, eager to give those gums and teeth a little exercise, to your utter dismay, you find out that there’s no toothpaste. What on earth did you just see? A bit flummoxed and dazed and confused, you wonder in puzzlement, how on earth is there no toothpaste in the room’s toilet when there’s possibly every item of personal hygiene and that kind of stuff available?

Well, that’s the catch. Increasingly, it has been found that hotels are dishing out every article needed to ensure utmost guest comfort but are skipping the toothpaste. It’s an increasing trend nowadays in hotels everywhere- whether in Europe, the Americas or Asia.

But why so?

Well, there are reasons for it and actually, far complicated than what you may have thought of if at all, any practical reason occurred to you.

So here’s what you ought to know.

For a few years now, it’s been seen that among the thing or articles of utility that guests worldwide do not as such ask for is the toothpaste. They ask for boot polish, common requests suggest extra bottles of water and other skin or hair care products when their stock runs dry.

But not the toothpaste. Hence, the hotels too, don’t want to spend on it. Imagine the costs, after all, which would run in a multiplicity of hotel rooms and the sheer number of this article.

But that’s just the one part of the answer as to why there’s no toothpaste in hotels. It’s also been found that the relative cost of toiletries- including soap, hair wash, body wash, shampoo and those sorts of things are reasonably cheaper than articles for oral hygiene.

The cost-per-ounce of toiletries, Mental Floss noted in a recent article, turns out to be less than those of oral hygiene products. But here’s another interesting strand of logic that might help us understand why hotels no longer provide toothpaste.

According to some hoteliers, ‘toothpastes aren’t that aspirational enough, there’s no upscale toothpaste brand as such.”

The above told, here’s how it works out:

1) In a budget hotel, the toothpaste is far more expensive- according to the cost per ounce- when compared to the toiletries cost and hence, one doesn’t find it there.

2) In premium hotels, the toothpaste isn’t really considered an aspirational product and hence, it’s no longer stocked for guests’ usage.

As a website puts it aptly, a “Toothpaste is merely a suggested amenity, not required.”