The Aslotel Story

Aslotel history and company profile

Aslotel was the first company to see the potential of hairdryers and amenities in hotel bedrooms and bathrooms. In 1978 the hotel and accommodation industry had not fully appreciated or anticipated what the travelling public actually needed. It was then that Murray Roberts and Eric Smith saw the opportunity of supplying hotels with ‘room facilities’. Murray began by contacting various people in the industry and within a short period of time Aslotel was supplying hairdryers to Holiday Inn, Mount Charlotte (Thistle) Hotels and many individual Best Western Hotels. Due to the success of the hairdryer concept we expanded by adding luggage racks and trouser presses to our range.

During that period a significant milestone was achieved when Pan Am, which subsequently became Intercontinental Hotels, adopted the hairdryer concept. This resulted in a successful continuity of supply to them for many years.

In 1984 we continued to expand by moving into hotel toiletries - we anticipated at that time that this particular area of hotel amenities had a long way to go to realise its potential. During this time Murray and Eric linked up with Georges Marchand in Paris and after a couple of years GroupeGM was formed with Aslotel as a founder member.

After our early success expanding toiletries together with bedroom equipment we had obviously made the right decision as competition began to rapidly appear. Amongst our emerging competitors were soap manufacturers and cosmetic companies. The hotel supply market however is very complex and requires specialist companies that are able to remain flexible and offer a wide range of cosmetic products, designs and supporting accessories.

Manufacturers such as Molton Brown and Neal’s Yard have only one brand name but Aslotel in association with GroupeGM hold the world hotel marketing rights for a growing portfolio of renowned brands and we are therefore able to offer brands to suit the aspirations of our customers.

Our equipment division has experienced enormous growth recently. As the market has changed over the years so Aslotel's direction has reshaped to anticipate the needs of a more sophisticated and demanding travelling public. For example, we anticipated the decline in sales of trouser presses many years ago, as they could not offer the perfect solution for valeting guests’ clothes. We joined forces with Sunbeam to provide the solution. By marrying together their ‘motion sensor’ iron (with auto-switch off) with a Presto valet iron organiser and their full size ironing board we created a complete Ironing Centre. So successful was this project it became a Hilton standard worldwide.

The endeavour to create the perfect solution continues as we are of the opinion that a hotel should provide top quality equipment and the finest quality of hotel toiletries if they are going to exceed the expectation of their guests...