Printed from smellbook.com/smells/hotel-room. This printout keeps the entry for Hotel Room itself: its description, reference card, Connections, questions, evidence, related smells, record details, states, names and citation. It leaves out your own notes, the map, the lists of paths, routes, stories and fragrance directions, and the lists headed “Also linked to” (other entries that share its place or material) and “Linked from”; they are on the page online. The entries this one links to are still printed under Connections and Related smells.
Categories and types group entries for browsing; they are editorial, not evidence. How smells are grouped.
A temporary indoor smell identity shaped by fresh linen, cleaning, carpet, climate control and guest materials.
Setting: ambient. An editorial word for the kind of place or occasion the smell belongs to, not a smell word.
A hotel room smells clean, soft and fabric-like, mixing fresh linen, cleaning products, carpet and climate-controlled air. EDITORIAL
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Links SmellBook records for this entry: where you meet it, what was written about it and related smells. EDITORIAL links are chosen by SmellBook editors and HISTORICAL links describe what one source wrote at one time. Nothing here is a ranking.
QUESTIONS ABOUT HOTEL ROOM
A hotel room smells clean, soft and fabric-like, mixing fresh linen, cleaning products, carpet and climate-controlled air. The impression is neutral and tidy, sometimes with a light added fragrance. It can feel slightly closed-in and dry until a window is opened. It is often confused with a freshly cleaned office or a guest bedroom.
It is met on entering a hotel bedroom, in a freshly serviced room after housekeeping, and during a travel stay. Hotel corridors and lifts carry a similar but stronger smell.
Typical settings: hotel bedroom, freshly serviced room, travel stay.
SmellBook links it to one place page: see it in Connections.
SmellBook has VERIFIED historical evidence for this entry: Soot and cabbage in a hotel bedroom, in a 1922 novel. It records what was written without stating the time described; it is not a scientific finding or a scientific explanation of why it smells.
No VERIFIED scientific claim is recorded for this entry yet.
Hotel Room is a broad hospitality profile and does not assume added fragrance is present.
Words that are easy to mix up: Is fresh the same as clean?
One historical source describes it, a novel, poem or play. It describes a time it does not state, no later than its publication, not the present: see its date in Connections; the sources are with the evidence below.
Answers marked EDITORIAL are written by SmellBook editors to describe the experience and add no scientific fact. Answers marked VERIFIED point to claims on published sources, checked against each source's own summary where one was available (each claim's page says how); what each claim supports is in its own text and scope.
VERIFIED · HISTORICAL means SmellBook checked what one historical text records, not whether it was true or what this smell is like today.
Historical evidence · 1 claim
Soot and cabbage in a hotel bedroom, in a 1922 novel
In Edith Wharton's novel The Glimpses of the Moon (1922), the heroine, alone in London, loathes her hideous hotel bedroom, with the smell of soot and cabbage coming through the window.
A depiction in a novel published in 1922; it shows how a hotel bedroom the heroine loathes was written about, not a record of a real hotel, and says nothing about hotel rooms today.
How this was found: Historical text. A published historical text, read on a digitised page; it records what was written when it was published. Source: historical record.
Passage: p. 192. Published 1922, the latest time it can describe; not the present.
Edith Wharton
Links chosen by SmellBook editors, not a ranking.
Associations can vary strongly by person, place and culture.
PATHS FROM HERE
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WHERE THIS SMELL APPEARS
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FOR RESEARCHERS AND EDITORS
Identity, revision history, corrections and how to cite Hotel Room.
CULTURAL: This entry's associations depend on context, language, memory or culture; its description and smell words are editorial. It says nothing about research or historical evidence; evidence for this entry is shown separately: VERIFIED · HISTORICAL.
A state says how an entry is met, such as wet, aged or roasted. It does not create a new smell, and it adds no scientific fact by itself: states marked EDITORIAL come from the entry's own records, and only those marked VERIFIED are reported by a VERIFIED claim.
How this entry is identified and named, for citing it or matching it with other records.
SmellBook SB-0095 — Hotel Roomsmellbook:smell:hotel-roomhttps://smellbook.com/smells/hotel-roomSmellBook. (2026). Hotel Room (revision 4, 2026-10-19). SmellBook Public Atlas. smellbook:smell:hotel-room. https://smellbook.com/smells/hotel-room@misc{smellbook_hotel_room_r4,
author = {{SmellBook}},
title = {Hotel Room},
year = {2026},
note = {SmellBook Public Atlas, revision 4, 2026-10-19, smellbook:smell:hotel-room},
url = {https://smellbook.com/smells/hotel-room}
}TY - ENCYC ID - smellbook-hotel-room-r4 TI - Hotel Room AU - SmellBook T2 - SmellBook Public Atlas PY - 2026 DA - 2026/10/19 ET - revision 4 UR - https://smellbook.com/smells/hotel-room N1 - SB-0095; smellbook:smell:hotel-room; resolver https://smellbook.com/id/smell/hotel-room ER -
The citation names revision 4 of 2026-10-19, so a reader can tell exactly which version was cited. Citing records what was read; it does not grant a licence.
Hotel Room is a broad hospitality profile and does not assume added fragrance is present.
Other entries whose editors linked to Hotel Room:
Added VERIFIED evidence through source intake.
Created 2026-09-22 · Updated 2026-10-19Dataset history In the SmellBook dataset since the first of three dataset releases of 2026-09-30; changed in the first of two dataset releases of 2026-10-05 (descriptors).
No correction notices published for this entry. Corrections policyEVIDENCE MATTERS
SmellBook separates cultural association, community perception, verified evidence, prediction and experimental relationships rather than presenting them as the same thing. Read the evidence guide ↗ See the evidence coverage report ↗