The Scents of Memory

Several luxury hotels use specific ambient perfumes so that guests unconsciously associate their stay with a unique olfactory memory. Years later, a similar smell can sometimes immediately bring back certain emotions of the trip. Memory then becomes partially stored in smell itself.

Smell maintains a particular link with brain regions associated with emotional memory, to the point that certain smells resurrect a precise memory in an instant. Luxury hotels have learned to exploit this resource by diffusing in their lobbies, corridors, and rooms a proper ambient perfume that gives the place an immediately recognizable olfactory signature. Several luxury hotels use specific ambient perfumes so that guests unconsciously associate their stay with a unique olfactory memory.

Without knowing it, the client associates this smell with comfort, travel, or relaxation, so that a similar scent, encountered months later, can suddenly bring back the emotions of the stay. Memory itself is thus partly constructed by sensory signals that one never really notices. Years later, a similar smell can sometimes immediately bring back certain emotions of the trip.

Psychologists hold smell for one of the most powerful senses for awakening autobiographical memory, and it is precisely this force that great hotels transform into a loyalty tool, making their atmosphere a perfume that one will seek, afterward, to find again. Memory then becomes partially stored in smell itself.