How Do I Brief a Fragrance Supplier as a Hotel Group?

The guide's hero gift Hotel Collection Fragrance From ₹299 The gift this guide is built around. Tap the photo for full details, scents and current per-unit pricing on the store. View this gift →Bulk quote on WhatsApp

Bring five things, and ask three questions

A group briefing a fragrance supplier is usually briefing on brand - words like refined, understated, contemporary, rooted - and while those words are not useless, a brief built on them produces a proposal built on them, and nobody in the room can tell whether the proposal is good. The remedy is to bring the physical facts, which are checkable, and to let the aesthetic conversation happen afterwards against something concrete. Five things to bring. One: zone lists from three genuinely different properties. Not your three biggest, and not your three newest - your three most different, ideally a sealed city hotel, an open resort, and a heritage or compact boutique building. Each list is produced the same way: take a floor plan of each level and draw a line at every door, fire door and full-height partition, then list the enclosed volumes that remain. That is the exercise, and it takes twenty minutes per property. The reason it matters is that a device serves the volume its air actually mixes with, stopping at the first closed door, permanently at a fire door, and always at a floor slab - so the enclosed volumes are the real unit of specification, and floor area is not, because floor area does not say where your doors are. Bringing three different properties forces any proposal to demonstrate that it works across your portfolio rather than in your flagship. Two: your zeroes, already decided before anybody proposes anything. Lift cars, always - the smallest volume in a building, up to twelve people, ventilation you do not control, nobody able to leave until the doors open. Kitchens and pantries, always. Back-of-house, service corridors, linen rooms and staff areas, which get extraction and dry storage rather than fragrance, partly because fragrance combines with what is there rather than removing it, and partly because staff are in those spaces for nine hours with no ability to leave. Covered outdoor areas, which cannot hold fragrance at all. Most corridors, because they receive room air at every door opening and clear almost none of it. And most guest rooms, because somebody sleeps there for eight hours and cannot leave when they have had enough. Deciding these in advance changes the conversation completely, because it means you are asking a supplier to work within a brief rather than to expand one. Three: operating hours, and in particular what must go quiet and when. Restaurants and function rooms need to be off during food service, since near food fragrance stops being a smell question and becomes a taste question. A lobby open to a breakfast room may need a programmed gap rather than a peak. Function rooms should run only when empty. This matters technically as well as operationally, because it decides where you need machines rather than reeds: reeds cannot be scheduled or switched, which makes them excellent in a lift lobby and wrong in a banqueting room. Four: your climates. A Mumbai property has effectively no dry season, a Delhi one has a long one, a Goa resort is open to the sea, and a hill property is cold enough that output falls rather than rises. Any proposal that treats a portfolio as one climate has not read it. Ask for a seasonal pair per property with changeover dates, and expect the wet-season setting to be the lower one, because humid air carries fragrance more slowly and clears it less readily. Five: who will own the standard afterwards. This is the question that separates a supply arrangement from a programme. Name the person at group level who will own the document and the person at each property who may change a setting, because a portfolio without named ownership drifts upward within a year - everybody who works in a hotel adapts to a steady background within about an hour and stops perceiving it, adaptation runs strictly one way, and nothing produces a downward correction on its own. Then the three questions to ask any supplier, including us. Which volume does each proposed device serve, and why does that space need one? A proposal that cannot answer this per line was produced from a spreadsheet rather than from your plans, and the tell is a device count that scales with your room number. Where are the zeroes in your proposal? A proposal with no zones set to nothing has not been designed, because the zeroes are the part that requires a view. And what would you tell us not to buy? A supplier who cannot name something is not advising you. Our own answers, for the record, so you can use them as a benchmark. We would tell you not to inject fragrance into your HVAC, because it removes the per-room off switch in the one building type where guests sleep, ties zoning to air handlers rather than rooms, and makes an honestly unscented room impossible to offer. We would tell you not to put a device in every guest room. We would tell you that lift cars get nothing. And we would tell you that we make seven registers rather than bespoke ones - Quiet Luxury, White Tea Serenity, Forest Suite, Tea Garden, Warm Welcome, Old-World Glamour and Lobby Bar - so if a private composition is central to your brief, we are not the supplier for that part of it. All seven are Rs 299 for 15ml, Rs 999 for 100ml and Rs 1,799 for 300ml; hardware is Rs 799 for a Boond, Rs 1,799 for a Sukoon and Rs 3,499 for a Megh with a 6L tank; reeds are Rs 749 to Rs 849 with three to four months from a bottle and refills at Rs 2,399 for 300ml and Rs 3,499 for 500ml. Machines take the water-based Hotel Collection at three to six drops per tank with a rinse between scents, never reed oil, which can damage them. Volume pricing is quoted against your zone lists on WhatsApp, and we will not produce a monthly consumption figure without them, because a number produced without your zones and hours was produced from nothing. We are independent and not affiliated with, endorsed by or associated with any hotel brand. We make no therapeutic, medical or wellness claims of any kind, and SOSA ambient fragrance is for the air of a room only, so a brief should not ask for claims about mood, sleep, focus or dwell time and no supplier should offer them. Everything is alcohol-free and made to IFRA-compliant standards, and a portion of every order supports girl-child education through Nanhi Kali.

Pairs with this programme Megh Ultrasonic Diffuser (6L) ₹3,499 The natural companion to what you just read. Click the image to see it on the product page. View this gift →Bulk quote on WhatsApp

A brief made of adjectives gets you a proposal made of adjectives

Groups usually brief on brand - refined, understated, contemporary, rooted - and while those words are not useless, a brief built on them produces a proposal built on them and nobody can tell whether it is good. Bring the physical facts instead. Zone lists from three genuinely different properties, not your three biggest: a sealed city hotel, an open resort, and a heritage or compact boutique building, each produced by drawing a line on the floor plans at every door, fire door and partition and listing the enclosed volumes that remain, because a device serves the volume its air mixes with and floor area does not say where your doors are. Your deliberate zeroes, already decided, so you are asking a supplier to work within a brief rather than expand one. Operating hours, and specifically what must go quiet during food service, since that decides where you need machines rather than reeds. Your climates, because a Mumbai property has effectively no dry season while a Delhi one has a long one. And who will own the standard afterwards, which is the question separating a supply arrangement from a programme.

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Hotel Collection Fragrance From ₹299 See details → Megh Ultrasonic Diffuser (6L) ₹3,499 See details → Boond Mini Diffuser (300ml) ₹799 See details →

Planning volumes? WhatsApp the bulk desk on +91 96192 18531 with your customer count, per-unit band and timeline - we will quote and build the programme with you.

The pre-quote worksheet is in the calculation chapter, the standard in the standard chapter, and ownership in the ownership chapter.

The SOSA business gifting edit

Whatever your business gifts, the logic is the same: gift the milestone moment, set the per-unit band by customer value, keep the register gentle and crowd-safe, and brand the gesture with your card rather than your logo on the product. Every SOSA fragrance is alcohol-free and made in India, and a portion of every order supports girl-child education through Nanhi Kali - so every customer gift quietly gives twice. Here is the full business range by per-unit band.

Scent your own space too The SOSA Vaayu at ₹11,999 - the scent machine for showrooms, lobbies and offices Waterless cold-air diffusion to ~1000m³ with app and timer control. Run it in your own premises so customers experience the scent there - then gift them the matching fragrance to take home. That loop is how a space becomes a memory. Tap to see full specs. See the Vaayu →

Complete the programme Boond Mini Diffuser (300ml) ₹799 The piece that rounds out the gifting programme. Tap the image to view details and current offers. View this gift →Bulk quote on WhatsApp

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