Excuse me, what is that smell?

By Yeoh Siew Hoon

Last month my niece, who was visiting me from Kuala Lumpur, bought some durians and put them in my fridge.

When I came home I took a sniff – as I often do; I have a keenly developed sense of smell – and said, “Fi-fo-fum, I smell the pong of durians.”

Even though I am Malaysian, and we are supposed to be born with an inherent love for this “king of fruits”, I cannot abide the smell of durian that Noel Barber said was akin to “eating custard in a lavatory”.

“No durians allowed,” I declared. And I insisted that she and her French friend, Benoit, ate them outside. Benoit politely declined to eat it, indoors or outdoors. His nose too crinkled. The French may love their blue cheese, but durians are in another olfactory stratosphere altogether.

Feeling sorry for my dog, who I am told can smell odours at concentrations nearly 100 million times lower than humans can, I went out, bought charcoal and placed blocks of it at strategic points around my 100sqm residence because I am told it is the best absorbent of nasty odors money can buy.

Lately, I’ve been thinking I should start carrying charcoal on my travels.

This is because these day I can’t walk into any hotel without some smell getting into my face or, rather, nostrils. In case you haven’t noticed, or smelt, the burning of essential oils has become the latest trend in five star hotels.

It all started with spas, of course – the burning of oils to soothe the senses. Until it obviously went to someone’s head and he or she thought, “Eureka, why don’t we burn oils throughout the hotel so that our lobbies and public areas can smell nice too?”

I caught the first whiff of it a few years ago at the then, newly-opened InterContinental in Bangkok. It was a very subtle scent of lemongrass, and I commented on it to the general manager. “Yes, we are the first hotel to do this,” he said proudly.

Problem is, in the hotel industry, when one does it, everybody is very quick to do it too and not everyone gets it right.

Yes, as we all know, in the hotel industry, today’s innovation is tomorrow’s imitation.

Take the “Heavenly Bed”. Starwood was the first to realise the bed could be differentiated. Now everyone claims to have beds that will send you straight to paradise.

Or the see-through glass panels between bathroom and bedroom where you’d better hope the person staying with you love you enough to want to see you doing stuff you should be doing in private.

And now it’s smells. Westin has its “White Tea”. Shangri-La has its “Essence of Shangri-La”, said to be “fresh, clean and subtly Asian”. Sheraton’s is a mixture of fig, bergamot, jasmine and freesia. At Four Points, it’s the smell of apple cinnamon.

I quote Harald H Vogt, the founder and chief marketer of the Scent Marketing Institute, “You walk into the lobby and you should – and you will – recognise the scent if you stay at the same hotel frequently. Imagine if there’s a scent that makes you want to stay in and order room service … Putting scent into the hotel room is the industry’s Holy Grail.”

I can just sniff it – Starwood’s “Heavenly Smell”, coming to a hotel room near you.

Personally, I think hotels are going a little overboard with this whole smelly thingy because, as I was trying to illustrate with my durian story, the sense of smell is a very personal one.

In other words, one woman’s ping can be another woman’s pong.

Interestingly, I popped into one of the Fragrance Hotels in Singapore and smelt nothing that remotely resembled essential oils in its premises. The owner of this budget chain, by the way, has popped up in Forbes’ richest list of people in Singapore.

Hmm, I wonder what’s the scent of his success?

Catch Yeoh Siew Hoon every week at the Transit Café – www.thetransitcafe.com