The Perfect Travel Beauty Routine

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Packing a beauty bag for vacation always sounds simple until you are standing over an open suitcase wondering why you suddenly need three serums, two blushes and a backup mascara for a four-day trip.

MERIT has a better idea.

The beauty brand has teamed up with The Ritz-Carlton for its first hospitality partnership, bringing a tightly edited version of the getting-ready routine into select hotels. The collaboration includes beauty carts in Ritz-Carlton Club Lounges, in-room product moments, personalized consultations at select properties and a limited-edition travel set that is basically made for anyone trying to pack lighter without feeling underprepared.

MERIT has always been about keeping beauty uncomplicated, and hotel rooms are exactly where that philosophy comes in handy.

A Hotel Beauty Setup We Would Actually Use

At participating properties, guests will find complimentary beauty carts in select Ritz-Carlton Club Lounges stocked with some of MERIT’s most popular products, including Great Skin Instant Glow Serum, Great Skin Double Cleanse, the new Clean Volume Mascara and Flush Balm.

Some locations will also offer personalized beauty consultations, while curated MERIT bundles can be ordered through room service. There are co-branded turndown touches too, plus a Minimalist Martini served with a sample of MERIT’s Retrospect fragrance, which feels like exactly the right amount of extra.

The idea is not to turn the hotel into a beauty counter. It is more about making the everyday parts of a trip feel a little easier and a little better. You land, check in, wash your face, get ready for dinner and somehow already have half the products you actually need waiting for you.

The Getaway Set Is the Real Star

The limited-edition MERIT x The Ritz-Carlton Getaway Set takes the same approach and turns it into a travel bag.

Inside is Great Skin Instant Glow Serum, Great Skin Double Cleanse, the new Clean Volume Mascara and Flush Balm in Postmodern, packed into an exclusive MERIT x The Ritz-Carlton pouch with a matching keychain.

It is a very smart edit. The serum helps wake up skin that has spent the day on a plane. The cleanser handles makeup, sunscreen and everything else travel throws at your face. Mascara does what mascara does, which is make you look significantly more alive in under a minute. And Flush Balm gives you color without requiring a brush, mirror or much effort at all.

Basically, it is the kind of makeup bag most of us were trying to pack in the first place before we added twelve unnecessary products.

Where to Find It

The partnership is available at select Ritz-Carlton properties including New York, Toronto, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Dallas, Washington, D.C. and Naples, with different experiences offered depending on the location.

The Getaway Set launched July 14 and is available for a limited time at participating hotels and on MERIT’s website while supplies last. 

What makes the collaboration work is that it feels built around how people actually travel. Most of us do not want a complicated beauty routine on vacation. We want a few reliable products, a good bathroom, decent lighting and enough time to get ready before dinner without turning the hotel counter into a Sephora stockroom.

MERIT and The Ritz-Carlton seem to have figured that out. GET YOURS HERE BEFORE IT SELLS OUT.