Worldy aromas bring travel memories flooding back
Olfactory memories are inextricably linked with travel.
Olfactory memories are inextricably linked with travel. I can’t smell jasmine, for example, without thinking of Buddhist temples in Asia and big brass bowls filled with sand in which tall joss sticks are anchored and fragrant clouds waft about, all but enveloping worshippers.
In Japan, it’s the scents that are barely there, such as camellia and sakura, and yet they linger as a softness that I struggle to recall exactly but can nonetheless summon as an emotion. Does happiness have a colour, I wonder. Pink, perhaps, and its intrinsic brightness and youth?
Hotel chains have caught on to the idea of perpetuating memories, with many developing signature scents to burn in diffusers, spritz as room sprays, to sell as candles and sometimes to filter through integrated airconditioning, which can really be too much.
In Thailand or Vietnam, there’ll be ginger and lemongrass, orange blossoms in Spain, while in the Middle East things get woody and rich, with damascene roses and oud.
Marriott opts for a more universal blend of apple, grapefruit and florals and, to settle all that sweetness, a lovely white cedar. At the Mandarin Oriental in Doha, the fragrance of full-blown flowers and muskiness is heady and rather wonderful; I drift about during my stay imagining I am as mysteriously alluring as Lawrence Durrell’s Justine, geographic accuracy aside.
While at Armani Hotel Dubai, I read about its “olfactory architecture” and the “scenting machines … hidden and directly connected to the HVAC system”. The result is an earthy, leathery, dark berry blast that gives me headaches.
More authentic smells can have a proper Proustian impact, too. The lavender fields of Provence and Hokkaido in bloom, the golden sugariness of beignets in New Orleans, or that particularly rich aroma of soil, rainforest and tropical abundance on Hawaii’s Kauai island. Frangipani leis come to mind, too, as do floating rose petals in Bali.
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