How JiViSa translated Taj's brand worlds into bespoke spa oils, wellness products and sensory gifting - with formulation, fragrance and packaging developed around each brief, across Taj Spa, IHCL SeleQtions and Vivanta.
Quick answer
Custom spa products and hotel gifting are only genuinely custom when the formulation changes, not the label. Across Taj Spa, SeleQtions and Vivanta, JiViSa built four treatment-specific massage oils, two skin-specific face oils, nut-free versions of both ranges, three brand-translated fragrances and a reusable gift box.
The engagement at a glance
| Client | Indian Hotels Company Limited (IHCL) — Taj, SeleQtions and Vivanta |
| Client involvement | Every major round in person, with Taljinder Singh, Senior Vice President & Brand Custodian, IHCL, and the Taj spa team |
| Brands in scope | Taj Spa · SeleQtions · Vivanta |
| Spa oils | 4 treatment-specific body massage oils - Rebalance, Grounding, Sleep Deep, Harmony |
| Face oils | 2 skin-specific elixirs - Tejas Elixir, Amrita Dew |
| Allergen work | Nut-free versions developed across the body-oil and face-oil ranges |
| In development | A kids-focused massage oil, currently in testing |
| Fragrance | 3 brand-translated candle scents for SeleQtions · 1 signature scent for Vivanta |
| Gifting | His & Hers handcrafted soap set in a reusable MDF and jute-rope box |
| Initial development cycle | Ideation and curation to sampling and presentation in roughly a month |
| What the brief ruled out | Logo-on-a-bottle customisation; products adapted for hospitality rather than built for it |
Contents
- Why this partnership is worth reading about
- The brief was never "make us a massage oil"
- Why fragrance is the hardest part of a luxury hotel brief
- Taj Spa: four oils, four treatment experiences
- The Treatment-to-Formulation Chain
- Then the brief got more specific: nut-free
- The face oils: Tejas Elixir and Amrita Dew
- And now the brief is expanding again
- Translating SeleQtions into scent
- The Brand-to-Scent Brief: six inputs a fragrance brief needs
- A gift box designed to last beyond the gift
- Vivanta: carrying a brand through a single candle
- The Customisation Audit: eight things that can actually be customised
- Why the collaboration worked
- Five mistakes we see in custom spa product briefs
- The Three Briefs: which problem are you actually solving?
- The custom spa product brief: a checklist
- FAQs
- Working with JiViSa
Why this partnership is worth reading about
Luxury hospitality has a particular relationship with detail.
At Taj, that relationship is exceptionally precise.
Our work with Indian Hotels Company Limited has involved some of the most detailed product development and feedback cycles we have experienced. Every major round was conducted in person, with close involvement from Taljinder Singh, Senior Vice President & Brand Custodian, IHCL, alongside the Taj spa team.
That is worth pausing on. In most hospitality product development, the brand team writes a brief, procurement runs the process, and the person responsible for what the brand feels like never smells the sample. Here, the brand custodian was in the room for the aroma rounds.
It changes what you are able to build.
If you are earlier in the process and still working out what a property is obliged to provide, start with our complete guide to hotel amenities in India. If your question is about private label and in-room branding, the JW Marriott custom amenities case study covers that. If it is about building a resort spa programme end to end, that is the Ganga Kinare and VILEEN engagement.
This article is about a narrower and harder problem: what happens inside the formulation when a brand asks for something that belongs to it.
The brief was never "make us a massage oil"
For a luxury hospitality brand, customisation cannot stop at putting a logo on a bottle.
The formulation has to work. The aroma has to make sense. The packaging has to feel right. And the product needs to carry the brand story.
The brief was closer to: understand the brand, understand the guest, then build something that belongs there.
That became the foundation of the work. Rather than start with a fixed catalogue, JiViSa worked around the specific requirements of each part of the portfolio - from treatment-specific massage oils to gifting collections that translated distinct brand identities into scent.
The result was not one product line. It was a collection of entirely different solutions built for entirely different purposes, and the only thing they had in common was the method.
Why fragrance is the hardest part of a luxury hotel brief
Most hotel briefs treat scent as a finishing decision. It is usually the last line item and the first one value-engineered.
That is backwards, and there is evidence for saying so.
Odour is unusually good at retrieving autobiographical memory. In experimental work published in Memory, olfactory cues triggered autobiographical memories more effectively than visual cues did, and a wider review of odour-evoked autobiographical memory in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review documents how consistently these memories carry more emotion than memories cued by other senses. A guest will forget the thread count. The bathroom will come back to them in an airport three years later.
IHCL is not new to this argument. When the group released The Sound of Taj, a bespoke sonic identity composed for the brand, Taljinder Singh described it as part of a longer pattern:
"Taj has consistently introduced signature touches that go beyond the visual including the fragrance that greets guests in its lobbies and the textures and tones that define its spaces."
That is the sentence that explains the brief. Scent is not decoration at Taj. It is a brand instrument, treated with the same seriousness as sound.
Which means a supplier walking into that conversation is not being asked to pick a nice smell. It is being asked to write in a language the brand already speaks.
Here is the uncomfortable part, and we will include ourselves in it: the amenity category has trained hotels to expect the opposite. Catalogue fragrances, three options, pick one, artwork by Friday. We have sent that email. Most suppliers in India have. The gap between how seriously a brand like Taj treats scent and how casually the supply side offers it is the real problem in this category — and it is an access problem, not an intelligence one. Nobody has published what a proper fragrance brief looks like, so nobody asks for one.
So the rest of this article is that, written down.
Taj Spa: four oils, four treatment experiences
For Taj Spa, JiViSa developed four therapeutic body massage oils.
All four share a fixed-oil base of apricot kernel, peach kernel, jojoba, almond and sesame oils, with natural vitamin E. The common base was designed to do two jobs that a spa massage oil must do simultaneously and that most retail oils do badly: nourish the skin, and provide enough slip for a therapist to work a full protocol without re-application every four minutes.
The essential-oil compositions then created a distinct purpose and sensory identity for each treatment.
Rebalance — for deep tissue massage
Eucalyptus peppermint, Himalayan geranium and palmarosa.
Refreshing and balancing. Built for a deeper, more restorative massage, where the guest is being worked on rather than soothed, and the aromatic needs to keep them present rather than send them under.
Grounding — for relaxation
Petitgrain, lavender and vetiver.
A calmer, more comforting aromatic intended to ease tension. Vetiver is the anchor here — it is heavy, rooted and slow, and it stops a lavender-forward blend from reading as generic spa.
Sleep Deep - for foot massage
Petitgrain, Lavender and Sweet Marjoram.
A soothing profile designed around unwinding and rest. Lavender carries the most published evidence of any aromatic in this space; a 2025 systematic review and meta-analysis in Holistic Nursing Practice examined its effect on sleep quality in adults, and a 2022 systematic review looked specifically at people without insomnia. We do not claim a clinical outcome for a hotel foot massage. We do say that if you are going to build a treatment around rest, the aromatic should be the one with a literature behind it.
Harmony - for head massage
Rhododendron, Nagarmotha and Patchouli.
Earthier and more meditative. Head massage is the treatment where fragrance sits closest to the guest's face for the longest time, which rules out anything sharp and rewards depth. Rhododendron is a Himalayan signature; nagarmotha and patchouli give it the base weight to stay in the room. It sits in the same grounding family as jatamansi, which we use elsewhere in the range.
The important part was never the ingredient list.
It was the connection between treatment, purpose, sensory profile and formulation. Each oil had a job to do.
The Treatment-to-Formulation Chain
This is the sequence we work in. We have not seen it published anywhere in the Indian spa supply category, ours included, until now — which is precisely why so many spa menus end up with one oil doing five jobs.
| Link | Question | Rebalance (deep tissue) | Grounding (relaxation) | Sleep Deep (foot) | Harmony (head) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Treatment | What is the therapist physically doing? | Deep, sustained pressure | Long, flowing strokes | Focused pressure, seated or reclined | Scalp and neck, guest supine |
| 2. Outcome | What should the guest feel afterwards? | Released, restored | Calm, unwound | Ready to sleep | Balanced, quiet-minded |
| 3. Aromatic function | What must the scent do during the treatment? | Keep them alert and comfortable through pressure | Lower tension without sedating | Actively invite sleep | Stay close to the face without fatiguing |
| 4. Essential oils | Which aromatics deliver that function? | Eucalyptus peppermint, Himalayan geranium, palmarosa | Petitgrain, lavender, vetiver | Petitgrain, lavender, sweet marjoram | Rhododendron, nagarmotha, patchouli |
| 5. Base system | What does the therapist's hand need? | Nourishment plus slip: apricot kernel, peach kernel, jojoba, almond, sesame, vitamin E — shared across all four | |||
| 6. Constraint layer | Who cannot use this? | Nut-free version developed | Nut-free version developed | Nut-free version developed | Nut-free version developed |
Two things fall out of reading it as a chain.
Link 3 is the one everyone skips. Briefs jump from treatment name straight to "something relaxing". But "what should this scent be doing while the therapist is working" is a different question from "what mood do we want", and it is the question that separates four distinct oils from four labels on the same oil.
Link 6 belongs at the start, not the end. Which is what the next section is about.
Then the brief got more specific: nut-free
A guest requirement brought a new consideration into the project. The range needed nut-free formulations.
Read the base again: apricot kernel, peach kernel, jojoba, almond, sesame. Almond is the obvious one. But this is where the category's usual approach fails, and it fails quietly.
The easy version is substitution — pull the almond, drop in something neutral, keep the name. It ships fast and it is almost always the wrong product. A fixed-oil base is a system, not a list. Each oil contributes a specific fatty-acid profile, absorption rate, weight on the skin and, crucially, drag. Remove one and you change how long the therapist's hand travels before the oil is gone. Change that and you have changed the treatment, not the ingredient.
So JiViSa developed nut-free versions across the oil portfolio rather than treating the requirement as a substitution exercise. That meant reconsidering the formulations while holding the quality, glide and sensory experience expected of a luxury spa product.
It is slower. It is also the only version that survives contact with a therapist.
There is a second reason to build the constraint in early rather than bolt it on. Fragrance itself is a regulated allergen category, and the rules have just moved. Under Regulation (EU) 2023/1545, the list of fragrance allergens requiring individual declaration on cosmetic labels expanded substantially — 45 substances added, 17 entries replaced and 10 deleted — with declaration thresholds of 0.001% in leave-on products and 0.01% in rinse-off. New products placed on the EU market had to comply by 31 July 2026; products already on the market have until 31 July 2028.
A custom hotel fragrance signed off in 2023 against the old list is not automatically compliant today. If your supplier tells you their formulations follow EU standards — and ours do; we work with third-party manufacturers who formulate to those standards — the correct follow-up question is which version of the list, and when the fragrance dossier was last reviewed.
That is a boring question. It is also the one that protects you.
The face oils: Tejas Elixir and Amrita Dew
The same attention extended to the face-oil range, where the variable is not the treatment but the skin.
Tejas Elixir — for normal-to-dry skin. Apricot kernel, jojoba, sesame, macadamia and walnut oils with mogra and natural vitamin E. Built around nourishment, hydration and a richer facial-care experience.
Amrita Dew - for oily skin. Apricot kernel, peach kernel, jojoba, sesame and hazelnut oils, supported by bergamot and natural vitamin E. A lighter facial oil suited to oilier skin types.
Both required nut-free versions too, extending the same formulation thinking across the portfolio. Walnut, macadamia and hazelnut are all in scope, which makes the face oils a harder reformulation problem than the body oils, not an easier one.
There is a wider point here that applies to any property running facials. Hydration and barrier function are the root of most of what a guest walks in complaining about — dryness, sensitivity, dullness, uneven texture. A facial oil that is chosen by skin type rather than by fragrance is doing barrier work. One chosen by fragrance is doing marketing. The two can be the same product, but only if somebody decided that on purpose.
And now the brief is expanding again
As Taj develops its offering for younger guests and families, JiViSa is working on a kids-focused massage oil. It is currently in development and testing.
For us this is what a strong hospitality partnership actually looks like: the brief changes as the guest changes. A product that worked for one audience is not automatically right for another.
So we go back to the formulation.
We are not going to describe the composition of something that has not finished testing. When it is done, it will be built the same way as the other four — treatment, outcome, aromatic function, oils, base, constraint — with the constraint layer doing considerably more work than usual.
Translating SeleQtions into scent
The engagement also expanded into gifting for IHCL SeleQtions, where the challenge was less about treatment and more about brand storytelling.
SeleQtions is IHCL's collection of named, distinctive properties, and the brand is explicitly built on three ideas. In IHCL's own words, it celebrates "a legacy of time, a sense of place or a specific theme" — the three categories the brand launched with in 2019 as a Slice of History, a Defining Location and a Differentiated Theme.
We were briefed on three identities: Colonial. City. Culture.
JiViSa translated each into an individual fragrance and brought them together as a three-candle collection.
| Identity | Concept | Fragrance | Why it works |
|---|---|---|---|
| Colonial | Slices of Time | Clary sage + cedarwood | Woody and aromatic. Cedarwood carries age without smelling like nostalgia; clary sage keeps it from turning into a men's fragrance |
| City | Ideas of Location | Juniper berry + cypress | Fresher and more contemporary, built around movement and place. Juniper reads as clean and modern; cypress gives it somewhere to stand |
| Cultural | Threads of Place | Clove + sandalwood | Warmer and more rooted. Sandalwood is the most culturally loaded aromatic available in India, and clove stops it drifting into temple shorthand |
The three aromas were not developed as three candles. They were developed as three sensory expressions of a brand architecture that already existed.
That is the difference between making branded products and making products that tell a brand story.
It is also the harder job, because it can be got wrong in a way a logo cannot. A misaligned scent does not look wrong. It just makes the guest feel, without being able to say why, that they are somewhere slightly less considered than the brand claims.
The Brand-to-Scent Brief: six inputs a fragrance brief needs
If you take one operational thing from this article, take this. These are the six inputs that let a formulator translate a brand rather than guess at it. Most fragrance briefs we receive contain one or two.
| # | Input | The question to answer | What goes wrong without it |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Brand architecture | What are the named pillars of this brand, in the brand's own words? | The scent expresses the property, not the brand — so it cannot be extended to the next property |
| 2 | The moment | Where and when does the guest meet this scent? Lobby, bathroom, turndown, treatment, gift opened at home? | A candle briefed like a lobby diffuser overpowers a room |
| 3 | Adjacent scents | What else is already in the air — existing lobby fragrance, spa oils, F&B, housekeeping chemicals? | Two scent stories collide and the guest reads the property as chaotic |
| 4 | Intensity ceiling | How strong is too strong for this guest, in this climate, in this season? | The single most common revision round, and the most avoidable |
| 5 | Cultural range | Which associations are on the table and which are off? Temple, festival, colonial, coastal, forest? | The scent is technically good and locally wrong |
| 6 | Compliance frame | Which allergen list, which market, retail or back-bar, what shelf life? | A finished fragrance that cannot legally ship as labelled |
Inputs 1 and 5 are the ones a brand team can answer in ten minutes and a procurement team cannot answer at all. Which is the argument for having the brand custodian in the room — the thing that made this engagement work.
A gift box designed to last beyond the gift
For SeleQtions, JiViSa also created a bespoke His & Hers handcrafted soap set:
- Seven Spice for him
- Almond Milk & Saffron for her
The two soaps were presented in a customised MDF box with a jute-rope finish and a branded insert card.
The reusable nature of the box was deliberate. Taj wanted the packaging to have a life beyond the gift itself, and the reusable box was a solution we proposed to make that happen.
It is a small detail.
But in premium gifting, small details are often the whole point.
There is also a straightforward commercial logic to it that gets under-argued in this category. A gift box is the only piece of hotel packaging that leaves the property intentionally. It goes home, it gets unpacked in front of other people, and then it either goes into a cupboard or into a bin. A box that survives that moment keeps a brand mark in a guest's house — on a desk, in a bathroom, holding something unrelated — for years. A box that does not is a disposal cost the guest pays on the brand's behalf.
Reusability is not a sustainability gesture here. It is the cheapest media buy in the whole engagement.
Vivanta: carrying a brand through a single candle
The work for Vivanta followed a different visual and sensory language.
IHCL positions Vivanta as a collection of vibrant hotels "handpicked for the young, contemporary achievers of today." That positioning does almost all the formulation work if you let it. Vivanta is not heritage, and it is not resort-calm. It is bright, urban and moving quickly.
JiViSa created a custom-branded silver tin candle around orange and bergamot, with the concept: "Carry the scent of Vivanta."
Orange and bergamot is a citrus-forward, immediately legible, contemporary accord. It is the opposite of the SeleQtions cedarwood-and-clove world, and that contrast is the point — two brands under one parent company should not smell like each other.
The format was designed for both guest gifting and retail, with custom sleeves and Vivanta branding integrated into the package. A tin travels, does not break in a suitcase, and photographs well, which matters more for this guest than for any other in the portfolio.
Again, the challenge was not "make us a candle." It was: how do we make this candle feel like Vivanta? That meant considering scent, format, colour, packaging and guest use together, as one decision.
The Customisation Audit: eight things that can actually be customised
It is easy to say a product is customised. The harder question is: what, exactly, was customised?
Take your most recent "custom" order and tick the rows honestly. This is the audit we now run on our own proposals before they go out.
| # | Dimension | The test | Taj engagement |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Formulation | Did the actual composition change for you, or did you choose from existing SKUs? | Yes — bases and blends built for the brief |
| 2 | Treatment association | Is each product tied to a specific treatment or use, or is one product doing several jobs? | Yes — four oils, four treatments |
| 3 | Aroma | Was the scent developed for you, or selected from a catalogue? | Yes — brand-translated, refined in person |
| 4 | Skin or guest specificity | Does the range address different skin types or guest groups? | Yes — normal-to-dry and oily face oils; kids' oil in development |
| 5 | Constraint handling | Were allergens, sensitivities and compliance built in, or handled by exclusion? | Yes — nut-free versions developed, not substituted |
| 6 | Packaging | Was the pack format designed, or was your artwork applied to a stock pack? | Yes — MDF box, jute rope, insert card, silver tin, custom sleeves |
| 7 | Material | Did you choose the material, and does it serve a purpose beyond looking right? | Yes — reusable MDF chosen for life beyond the gift |
| 8 | Utility | Does the object have a second life, or does it end at the moment of use? | Yes — reusable box; retail-ready candle format |
Most orders in this category score two: aroma chosen from a list, and artwork. That is not a criticism of the buyer. It is a description of what the supply side has historically offered, and it is a fair reflection of what most catalogues can actually do.
The audit is useful precisely because it is uncomfortable for suppliers. Ask for it. Any partner who cannot answer eight rows should be answering three.
Why the collaboration worked
The most important part of this project was not any individual formulation. It was the process.
Every major round was handled in person. Feedback was detailed. Aroma strengths were refined. Small changes were discussed and implemented quickly.
Because the team was involved closely throughout, JiViSa could respond in real time rather than disappear into a long development cycle and return weeks later with a finished product that needed reworking.
The initial development moved from ideation and curation through to sampling and presentation within roughly a month.
That speed mattered, and it is worth being precise about where it came from. It was not from working faster. It was from the first concepts already landing close to the intended direction, which meant the subsequent iterations were about refining details — aroma strength, balance — rather than starting again.
Front-loading the brief is what buys the speed. There is no other lever.
Five mistakes we see in custom spa product briefs
We have made versions of most of these ourselves, which is why they are worth writing down.
1. Treating fragrance as the last decision. It arrives at the end of the brief, gets the least time and the most revisions. Moving it to the front costs nothing and removes the longest feedback loop in the project.
2. Substituting instead of reformulating. When an allergen, a sourcing gap or a cost target forces a change, swapping one ingredient for another and keeping the name is faster and almost always produces a product that behaves differently in a therapist's hands. If the base changes, the formulation changes.
3. Letting one oil do four treatments. It looks like simplification and it is really a decision to make four treatments feel the same. If the spa menu differentiates, the back-bar has to.
4. Approving samples without the person who owns the brand. A procurement team can approve quality. Only the brand can approve whether something belongs. Where those are different people and only one of them is in the room, the round gets repeated.
5. Designing packaging for the photograph. A pack is judged twice — once in a presentation deck and once in a guest's home three weeks later. The second judgement is the one that lasts, and it is the one nobody briefs for.
The Three Briefs: which problem are you actually solving?
Not every property needs the full engagement described here, and it would be dishonest to suggest otherwise. Almost every custom request we receive is one of three problems wearing the same words. Work out which one you have before you request a single quotation.
Brief 1 — A treatment that needs a product. Your spa menu exists, your therapists are trained, and the products they are using do not match what the menu promises. You need: a formulator with back-bar depth. Judge on whether they can build to a treatment rather than sell you a range. Start at link 1 of the Treatment-to-Formulation Chain.
Brief 2 — A brand that needs a scent. The property or the group has a clear identity and nothing in the guest's sensory experience expresses it. You need: a fragrance development partner, and internal alignment first. Fill in the six inputs before you approach anyone. The brief is the deliverable.
Brief 3 — A moment that needs an object. A welcome, a turndown, a wedding, a loyalty milestone, a conference — the moment is defined and the gift is not. You need: a gifting partner who will start from the moment, not the catalogue. Judge on the questions they ask about who opens it and where. Our luxury gifting and corporate gifting work both start here.
Most properties have two of the three and have only briefed one. If you are not sure which row you are in, that is worth an hour internally before it becomes six weeks of sampling.
For the full amenity picture across all three, see our hotel amenities range and the wellness amenities and gifting overview.
The custom spa product brief: a checklist
Take this into your next supplier conversation. It is the shortest version of everything above.
- Brand pillars. Written down, in the brand's own words, before the first sample
- Treatment map. Every treatment on the menu, and which product serves it
- Aromatic function per treatment. Not the mood — what the scent must do during the work
- The moment. Where and when the guest meets each product
- Adjacent scents. What is already in the air on the property
- Intensity ceiling. Agreed before sampling, not discovered during it
- Cultural range. Associations in and out of bounds, stated plainly
- Constraint layer. Allergens, sensitivities, guest groups — at the start, not on discovery
- Compliance frame. Which allergen list, which market, what shelf life, who holds the dossier
- Base system requirements. Glide, absorption, residue, therapist re-application tolerance
- Packaging second life. What happens to this object after the moment it was made for
- Decision-makers in the room. Who approves quality, who approves fit, and are they both attending
- Round cadence. How many rounds, in person or remote, and who attends each
- The extension question. If this works, what is the next brand or property it has to stretch to?
Request the same checklist as part of a personalised quote, or download the current hospitality brochure.
From a product brief to a brand expression
Across the engagement, JiViSa's role has covered custom spa formulations, treatment-specific massage oils, nut-free product development, skin-specific facial oils, a kids-focused oil in development, custom fragrance creation, branded candles, experiential gifting, bespoke packaging and brand storytelling.
But there is a larger common thread.
We were constantly translating something intangible into something tangible.
A treatment philosophy became an oil. A brand identity became a fragrance. A gifting category became a reusable object. And a guest experience became something they could hold, smell, use and remember.
That level of detail is why we believe the best custom hotel amenities and spa products are not products adapted for hospitality.
They are products built for the hospitality experience.
FAQs
What are custom spa products? Custom spa products are formulations built for a specific property, brand or treatment rather than selected from a catalogue and relabelled. Genuine customisation changes the composition, the aroma, the packaging or the constraint set — ideally several of these. Applying artwork to a stock product is private labelling, which is a different and cheaper thing.
How is a spa massage oil different from a retail body oil? Two ways. A spa massage oil is built around glide — the therapist needs to work a full protocol without re-applying — and around an aromatic that performs a specific function during the treatment. Retail oils are built for absorption and fragrance appeal. Using a retail oil as back-bar is one of the most common causes of inconsistent treatments.
How do you choose essential oils for a specific massage treatment? Work backwards from what the therapist is physically doing and what the guest should feel afterwards, then ask what the scent must do during the treatment itself. A deep tissue oil and a foot massage oil need opposite things from their aromatics. Our Treatment-to-Formulation Chain sets out the full sequence.
What should be in a hotel spa massage oil base? A blend of fixed oils chosen for fatty-acid profile, absorption rate and slip, plus an antioxidant such as natural vitamin E. The Taj Spa range uses apricot kernel, peach kernel, jojoba, almond and sesame. The specific combination matters more than any single oil, because the base is a system.
Can spa oils be made nut-free? Yes, but not by substitution alone. Removing almond, walnut, macadamia or hazelnut changes the weight, absorption and glide of the whole base, so the formulation has to be rebuilt to hold the same sensory result. JiViSa developed nut-free versions across both the body-oil and face-oil ranges for Taj on that basis.
Why would a hotel need nut-free spa products? Because a guest asks. Nut allergies are not rare, treatments involve prolonged skin contact over a large surface area, and a spa cannot reasonably ask every guest to self-assess an ingredient list at the door. Having a nut-free option on the back-bar removes a refusal and a risk at the same time.
Do you develop custom fragrances for hotels? Yes. For SeleQtions, JiViSa translated three brand identities into three individual candle fragrances; for Vivanta, a single signature accord of orange and bergamot. Fragrance development needs the six brief inputs — brand architecture, the moment, adjacent scents, intensity ceiling, cultural range and compliance frame.
How long does custom spa product development take? For the Taj engagement, initial development ran from ideation and curation through to sampling and presentation in roughly a month, with later rounds refining aroma strength and balance. That timeline depended on the brief being clear at the start and the decision-makers being in the room. We do not publish a standard timeline, because quoting one without seeing your brief would be misleading — ask us against your actual launch date.
Can one supplier handle spa oils, amenities, candles and gifting? Yes, and there is an argument for it: a single formulation partner keeps the treatment room, the bathroom and the gift telling the same sensory story. What matters is whether that supplier can genuinely formulate rather than only source. Ask to see two products they built that were not in their catalogue first.
What is the difference between private label and custom formulation? Private label applies your brand to an existing formulation. Custom formulation changes what is in the bottle for you. Both are legitimate; they cost different amounts and they defend different things. The JW Marriott case study covers the private-label and branding side in detail.
Do you supply luxury hotel gifting and guest welcome gifts? Yes. For SeleQtions, JiViSa developed a His & Hers handcrafted soap set — Seven Spice and Almond Milk & Saffron — in a reusable MDF and jute-rope box with a branded insert card. Explore the luxury wellness gifting collection or start a bulk enquiry.
Why does reusable packaging matter in hotel gifting? A gift box is the only hotel packaging that intentionally leaves the property. If it survives being unpacked, it keeps a brand mark in the guest's home for years. If it does not, the guest pays the disposal cost on the brand's behalf. See our sustainability position for how we approach material choices.
Can you make custom branded candles for hotels? Yes — custom scent, format, vessel, colour, sleeve and branding. The Vivanta candle was a silver tin built for travel and retail; the SeleQtions collection was three fragrances presented together. Our standing range is in handmade soy wax candles and the aromatherapy collection.
Are your products EU-compliant, and what does that actually mean? JiViSa does not own a factory. We work with third-party manufacturers who formulate to EU ingredient standards, and we provide certificates for the specific products a client orders, on request. On fragrance specifically, Regulation (EU) 2023/1545 expanded the declarable allergen list with deadlines of 31 July 2026 for new products and 31 July 2028 for existing ones. More on our position in what clean really means at JiViSa.
Do you develop face oils for different skin types? Yes. The Taj range included Tejas Elixir for normal-to-dry skin and Amrita Dew for oily skin, both with nut-free versions. Choosing a facial oil by skin type rather than by fragrance is what makes it barrier care rather than scent delivery.
Do you work with hotel spas outside the IHCL group? Yes — across hotel groups, resorts, boutique properties and standalone spas. The Ganga Kinare and VILEEN engagement covers a full resort spa build including menu development and therapist training. We also run our own women-only healing spa, the JiViSa Rejuvenation Center in Gurugram, where protocol thinking gets tested before it reaches a client property.
What is the minimum order quantity for custom spa products? It depends on the format, the packaging and how much of the formulation is being built from scratch. We work with boutique properties as well as large groups and would rather tell you honestly whether a format works at your volume than quote a number that does not survive the brief. Start with a bulk or B2B enquiry.
Can custom hotel products also be sold to guests? Yes, and it should be decided at formulation stage. Retail formats differ from back-bar and amenity formats in packaging, labelling, batch size and shelf life. The Vivanta tin was designed for both gifting and retail from the outset, which is the cheaper order of operations.
How do we start a conversation about our property? Send us the brand, the brief and the moment you are trying to build for. Request a personalised quote, download the hospitality brochure, or get in touch directly.
Working with JiViSa
JiViSa works with hotels and hospitality brands on custom spa products, massage oils, hotel amenities, wellness gifting, fragrance and branded guest experiences — from formulation and sensory development through to packaging and production.
When the brief is specific, the solution should be too.
- Request a personalised quote — tell us the brand, the brief and the moment
- Explore the hotel amenities range — formats, ranges and customisation
- Download the hospitality brochure — the full 2026 catalogue
- Co-create with us — for brands building something that does not exist yet
- Talk to us about volumes — flexible MOQs, boutique to portfolio
For context on how we work with businesses more broadly, see JiViSa for Business. To meet the people who would be on your project, see Team JiViSa, or follow the work on LinkedIn.
Sources and references
- IHCL — Our Brands: brand definitions and positioning for Taj, SeleQtions and Vivanta.
- IHCL — SeleQtions launch announcement and Tata group: The Best SeleQtions: the brand's three named categories — Slice of History, Defining Location, Differentiated Theme — launched September 2019.
- Campaign Middle East — Indian Hotels Company releases 'The Sound of Taj': Taljinder Singh, Senior Vice President and Brand Custodian, IHCL, on Taj's signature sensory touches including lobby fragrance.
- Regulation (EU) 2023/1545, EUR-Lex and SGS summary: expansion of the declarable fragrance allergen list, thresholds of 0.001% leave-on and 0.01% rinse-off, compliance deadlines 31 July 2026 and 31 July 2028.
- Memory — Olfactory cues are more effective than visual cues in experimentally triggering autobiographical memories and Psychonomic Bulletin & Review — an in-depth review of odor-evoked autobiographical memory.
- Holistic Nursing Practice (2025) — The Sleep-Enhancing Effect of Lavender Essential Oil in Adults: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis and The Effect of Lavender on Sleep Quality in Individuals Without Insomnia: A Systematic Review.
- First-hand engagement records: JiViSa × Indian Hotels Company Limited — Taj Spa, IHCL SeleQtions and Vivanta.
Written by the JiViSa hospitality team, with formulation and compliance input from Kahkasha Khan, Product Development Head. Published under Snehi Singh, Co-Founder & Brand Head, JiViSa Wellness.
