Buy What Hotels Buy: Towels, Duvets and Robes for Your Home

A hotel towel is washed several hundred times in its working life and still looks presentable. That isn’t luck, and it isn’t the laundry. It’s what was bought in the first place.

We’ve supplied Irish hotels, guesthouses and nursing homes for over 110 years. In 2024, Celebrity Hotelier Francis Brennan brought the RTÉ At Your Service cameras to our warehouse in Charleville to show two new guesthouse owners how hotels choose towels, duvets and robes. Everything he showed them comes from the same stock we sell for your home.

Towels: What the Weight Number Means

Towel quality is measured in GSM, grams per square metre. The towels in the segment run from 450 to 600gsm.

• 500gsm is the working choice in many hotels. It washes well, dries faster on the rail and holds its feel.
• 600gsm is heavier and more absorbent, made from ring spun extra deep pile yarns. It’s what 5-star properties choose.

On colour, Brennan’s advice to the owners was simple: white. Coloured towels show bleach marks and fade with every hot wash. As he put it on the programme, white “washes forever”. At home, that means towels that stay presentable through years of proper hot washes.

A towel bought on weight rather than colour or price is the towel you stop replacing.

Duvets and Pillows: Why Hotels Choose Microfibre

Hotel bedding is washed constantly, so most operators have moved from feather to non-allergenic microfibre. It holds its shape and warmth through repeated washing, and it’s made to hug the body the way feather and down does.

At home the same logic applies, with one addition: if anyone in the house has allergies, microfibre is the safer choice. Our pillows follow the same construction.

Robes: The One the Spas Use

The velour robe in the segment is the one we sell for your home. 420gsm, white or charcoal grey, in large and extra large. It’s the robe you’ll find in spas and hotel bedrooms around Ireland.

Brennan’s advice to the guesthouse owners on stocking robes was blunt: “A spa eats robes.” Guests love them and they disappear. At home the maths is kinder. One each and a spare for guests is plenty.

Buy for Durability

Hotels keep six towel sets per bathroom: some in use, the rest in the wash or the press. The same rotation works at home on a smaller scale. Three sets per bathroom, rotated, will last years.

The principle behind everything in the segment hasn’t changed in a century: hotels buy on durability, not trend. It costs less by the second year.

The products from the segment are in our Bedroom and Bathroom ranges. Free nationwide delivery on orders over €50.

The full transcript of the segment is on our trade site: How Professional Operators Choose Commercial Towels, Duvets and Robes.