Fueguia 1833's elegant reed diffuser carries the Waldorf Astoria New York's signature scent. Photo / Fueguia 1833
Tamara Hinson dives nose-first into the weird and wonderful trend of signature scents popping up across the world of travel.
In late 2025, Kempegowda International Airport in Bangalore, India, unveiled Dancing Bamboo, a bespoke scent which now wafts subtly around areas such as lounges, check-in desks and arrival zones. Key notes include bamboo, woods and bergamot, and Kempegowda has joined countless airports, hotels and airlines launching signature scents.
Which all sounds rather lovely, but creating the perfect scent for these environments is far from easy, according to Jason Lee, founder of Scent by Six, which produces bespoke scents for hotels.
“The principal challenge lies in crafting a scent that resonates universally whilst remaining sufficiently distinctive to anchor the brand in guests’ memories,” he says. “Hotels welcome extraordinarily diverse clientele, and a fragrance that evokes comfort to one guest may feel cloying or unfamiliar to another.”
Here are nine other spots using the unexpected element of smell to comfort and delight travellers.
This London hotel’s signature scent, the white tea, cedar and vanilla-based White Tea, proved such a hit in 2024 that the Westin rolled out a range of candles, reed diffusers and room sprays. “We use White Tea to create a calming and welcoming atmosphere from the moment guests arrive, and it’s a scent which beautifully reflects our brand pillars of wellness and relaxation, helping guests feel balanced, refreshed, and instantly at ease,” says Raffaele Ruocco, the hotel’s general manager.
Free fizz and nuts are no longer the only reasons we love airport lounges, because a growing number have introduced bespoke scents. Aspire Lounges’ scent is a heady blend of bergamot, tea and mandarin, and it was truly a labour of love. “We trialled three scents over three months,” says Graham Allen, global operations director at Aspire Executive Lounges. “Bergamot, Tea & Mandarin emerged as the clear favourite for being both powerful yet subtle.” Distribution is a fine art, too. “Every lounge is different,” says Graham. “For this reason, our scenting machines are fully adjustable to suit each space, ensuring the right intensity for the right space.”
Last November, Vietnam became one of the first airlines to unveil a signature scent, but other airlines are following suit. “Hospitality is getting more competitive, and it’s no longer just about the five-star service,” says the fragrance’s creator Rei Nguyen. She admits that creating a scent for an airline isn’t an easy task. “Cabin pressure can affect our olfactory receptors and our perception of scent,” she points out. Lighter, cleaner scents work best, and for LotuScent we wanted something which had a cultural elegance.” The result? An explosion of green tea, pomelo and tangerine. And quite possibly the nicest-smelling cabin in the skies.
These days, certain hotels are opting for different twists on base scents to mix things up, while still creating a sense of consistency. One example is Kuala Lumpur’s Kimpton Naluria Kuala Lumpur by IHG.
“During the day, our hotel smells of citrusy notes such as orange and lemon, which are lighter and fresher, echoing the kind of fragrance someone would wear during the daytime,” says Paul Cunningham, general manager, Kimpton Naluria Kuala Lumpur.
“By evening, we transition to a deeper coastal blend of lime, lavender, eucalyptus and sandalwood – more nuanced and musky, and similar to a scent someone would choose for dinner or a night out.”
No, this hotel hasn’t opted for the scents of (big) apples, but a seriously swanky mix of sandalwood, santalum and pensamiento. The latter is apparently derived from pansies and is known for its ability to promote a feeling of balance and emotional stability. The fragrance, 301 Park Avenue, was created by luxury fragrance house Fueguia 1833, and the aim was to come up with a scent that reflected New York. And let’s face it, sandalwood and pansies certainly sound preferable to the scent of damp subways and steaming manholes.
This property’s fragrance was designed to evoke the Hong Kong scents that greeted the British when they first arrived here. No, not fish balls and tofu but frangipani, ylang ylang, magnolia, jasmine and freesia. Brown University’s Rachel Herz, PhD, neuroscientist and a leading expert in the psychological science of smell, says that one of the perks of a signature scent is how it connects guests to the hotel, which they’ll hopefully return to again and again.
“The scent becomes part of the multisensory environment of the space and its singular emotional and memory qualities creates both a powerful first impression and a special sensorial memory trigger to return,” the scent supremo explains.
Okay, the scent of a warm damp cave might not sound too appealing, but thankfully, the inspiration for this Turkish hotel’s fragrance was the region’s stone fairy chimneys. And it’s absolutely gorgeous – a concoction of matcha, violet leaf, rose and orris. It’s another example of a hotel that enlisted a luxurious fragrance house, in this case, Nishane, the first and only Istanbul-based boutique fragrance house.
Any bespoke scent used by a luxurious Japanese hotel is almost guaranteed to smell divine, and this hotel’s addictively fresh fragrance, which combines notes of lime, anise and lemon, has become so popular that it’s no longer just spritzed through the public areas – it can be purchased as an essential oil, fabric mist and bath salts. “A guest of ours who resides in Hyogo, Japan loves our Pure Tranquillity signature scent so much that every few months, she rings our team to put in an order to replenish her stocks - usually the aroma diffuser and the mist,” reveals chief concierge Mayako Sumiyoshi at the Palace Hotel Tokyo.
For the traditionalists prone to snaffling hotel soaps, shower gels and bath salts, the good news is that today’s hotel amenities have had a fabulously luxurious makeover. Pan Pacific Hotels teamed up with Jo Loves to create a range of amenities that double as a citrus-themed ode to Thailand’s botanicals. The Mango Thai Lime scent was designed especially for Pan Pacific properties, and Jo Malone used her numerous trips to Southeast Asia as inspiration.