Whether presenting as a custom ambient scent for a hotel lobby or a cross-industry perfume line, lifestyle fragrance branding has gained serious momentum in recent years.

The genre began in the early 20th century. Fashion houses like Chanel and Poiret created olfactory brand extensions, which soon evolved into a symbiotic relationship between fashion and fragrance brands that persists to this day. In 1996, the Monte Carlo Resort and Casino (now going by the name Park MGM) became the first commercial building to diffuse an indoor scent. The pomegranate and sage combination didn’t just cover up indoor smoking odors, but creating a welcoming space through scent was shown to increase gambling by 45%. In the retail sector, Fierce by Abercrombie and Fitch created a thick cloud of all-American jock masculinity in the fashion brand’s dimly lit stores in the early 2000s. For hospitality, the Four Seasons Hotel New York Downtown introduced a candle collection with four scents inspired by, naturally, a different season in 2018. 

Today, the B2B segment of the fragrance industry is set to grow by a CAGR of 9.6% until 2031. The scent marketing segment was worth $1.5 billion in 2024, and is predicted to reach $3.2 billion by 2033.

To get an insider’s scoop on the trajectory of the category, BeautyMatter spoke to Caroline Fabrigas, CEO of Scent Marketing Inc.; Lara Baker, Marketing Manager at Air Aroma; Frederick Bouchardy, founder at Joya Studio; and Woo Pailet, Head of Marketing at Joya Studio.

Translating Brand DNA into Scents

It all starts with the juice, but how exactly does one bottle translate the essence of a winery or museum into physical form?

“This art of custom scent development to be emblematic of a brand is a real sweet spot. It's taking the DNA of the brand, putting it through the olfactory lens, looking at certain cues, and then developing the fragrances around those cues. It's almost like you're selling their brand back to them through scent,” Fabrigas said. Finetuning the scent to these DNA nuances and also considering the time and space for their activation, are the details that can make or break a fragrance branding project.

Fabrigas’ work ranges from creating candles for Opus One Winery to collaborations with NEST NEW YORK and the Fifth Avenue Association on street fragrances and creating scented worry stones made of tree pulp for wellness studios. The company scented the lobby of Deutsche Bank Center in Manhattan with a eucalyptus scent and diffuses waffle cone, strawberry, and popcorn scents throughout the Museum of Ice Cream—selected scents aligning with different experiences of every room.

Fifty percent of her business is in the hospitality realm and another bulk share in the transit space. "There is so much opportunity, you literally can scent any space. There’s so much demand for this.”

Joya Studio launched in 2006. “Part of it was born out of the artistic pursuit. There was also a commercial opportunity there because at the time there were hardcore manufacturers but nothing that was a branded solution with a voice,” founder Bouchardy told BeautyMatter. 

With growing interest and knowledge access around fragrance, the boundaries of its scent branding opportunities are continuing to expand. To date, the company has worked with 178 brands across retail, fashion, live events, gastronomy, and distillery. One recent project included a fine fragrance line for California-based vineyard Dancing, with three different scents inspired by its terroir. “The best collaborations are where you have incentive alignment in terms of storytelling but also in terms of trust,” Bouchardy added. 

Joya Studio has a longstanding creative partnership with film studio A24, most recently creating a blueberry scent that was diffused during a pivotal plot moment at Heretic advance screenings on October 30, 2024, in Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas nationwide. “Consumers and brands now have a higher tolerance for what's deemed as authentic and genuine, whether it's a product or an experience,” said Pailet. “Authenticity leans heavily into the storytelling aspect of a lot of the lifestyle brand products.”

“If you have a desire to connect with your customers, then interior ambient scenting is going to be beneficial,” Baker said. Originally founded in Melbourne, scent marketing agency Air Aroma has been in operation for 27 years and works with clients including Standard Hotels, Barry’s fitness studios, and Cathay Pacific Airways. More niche projects have included recreating the scent of a MacBook for an art installation and scenting a zoo. It takes six to eight weeks on average for a project to go from start to completion, but client briefs that require market research and testing will have longer timelines. 

Baker estimates that 70% of the brand’s business is in ambient diffusion and 30% in white-labeled products, such as candles and diffusers. The company’s employee numbers have doubled in the past 10 years, with five global offices worldwide and over 70 distributors. 

The Post-COVID Boom

Both Baker and Fabrigas noted the impact of COVID on creating an increased desire for immersive scent experiences. “Creating special in-person experiences has become more important as we're more online, isolated, and craving that sense of connection,” Baker said, highlighting the strength of the medium for brick-and-mortar stores dealing with the challenging setbacks of the physical retail era during that period.

“We used scents as a way to have an emotional reaction, connection, and used it for cues, so lots of people became attuned to using scent in a different way. When we emerged from COVID, people were looking for meaningful experiences, and retailers and hospitality wanted to bring those guests and customers back into a memorable moment,” Fabrigas added. For those who had been homebound and were now embracing travel, scent became a way to materialize their adventures upon the return home.

Subtle Scenting, Noticeable Impact

HVAC systems are the go-to method for ambient scenting on a larger scale. Baker noted a universal use of these scent solutions in hotels but an extended use of the format in the auto industry, airlines, airports, cruise lines, and museums.  

For hotels specifically, the purchase of white label products through guests generates approximately $30,000 in revenue annually, Baker estimates. “For people that have multiple products—reed diffusers, room sprays—that number just goes up. It’s a three-to-one revenue on spend depending on the product.”

Fabrigas said that retail clients saw a 14% increase in sales following the installation of a diffusion scent, and hospitality clients experienced a “very successful incremental revenue stream” by selling their scents directly to customers. “You can really see the incremental success of that. Sometimes, scent marketing is used solely for overall branding. You might not have a quantifiable way to assess it, but the same way you know that your logo is important and people recognize scent, gets wrapped up as a part of that expression as well.”

As for the scents themselves, Baker prioritized a hotel scent that is “not too overt or abrasive” but said retail spaces tend to be more “risk-taking.” Examples include recreating the scent of the Canadian wilderness for Canada Goose’s boutiques or that of the Australian outback for R.M. Williams, with notes of hay and tobacco. Fabrigas noted the popularity of lighter, aquatic, or citrus scents for fitness spaces and oceanside hotels. Woody notes, which she describes as giving an “elegance, tenacity, and richness” to experiences, remain popular across the board.

Scent diffusion, previously enabled through waterborne systems, has evolved into cold mist diffusion, which is less visible compared to the clouding effect of the former systems and also features smaller molecules that float higher in the air. While candles are a beloved format, they do pose a fire risk, and Fabrigas also notes a hesitancy with certain clients around the potential health hazards of their ingredients (from soot to the release of toluene or benzene in paraffin wax).

“These are a couple of callouts as to why maybe clients are moving to diffusion. Then you also have those who love it all. They want candles for the ambiance but continuous scent diffusion in another area. Maybe they don't have a power outlet in their powder room, so they put a reed diffuser in there.”

More Industries, More Opportunities

Fragrance branding isn’t just confined to the walls of a high-end hotel room or prestigious retailer. As companies seek to stake their claim in an ever-growing landscape, tapping into the emotional power of scent can be a strong competitive advantage. 

Baker saw a rise in requests from the medical industry, “creating that clean environment,” and luxury residential buildings, “creating that sense of arrival and home.” Air Aroma is currently developing Bluetooth-enabled technology to allow clients on-demand customization on how strongly those scents show up.

Fabrigas sees supermarkets, pet food stores, and public showers/steam rooms as three other arenas for future opportunities.  As the only approved vendor for a major metropolitan transit system, Scent Marketing Inc. is also looking into scenting the NYC subways. Arenas and stadiums will be another lucrative segment. “Scent is entering every single part of our lives; it isn't just for the smell, but really the influencing factor. There's such emotionality around sports and music that scent will also become a part of that experience.”

Baker and Fabrigas also predict a rise in more aromatherapy-based experiences. “People are embracing connecting to nature in that way and noticing the stress reduction benefits. It's not just about creating a nice space. It's creating this emotional feel and sense of place,” Baker said. “Scent has such a role to play in our lifestyles, but under the right circumstances, with the right formulas, it can go further to enhance your health and your wellness,” Fabrigas added. 

For enterprises like Joya Studio, Scent Marketing Inc., and Air Aroma, the future is brimming with possibilities to bring their creative visions and decades of know-how to a new clientele. Whether it’s cinemaphiles craving that extra element of dimension in their movie-watching, luxury hotel guests who want to take home an extra dose of glamour, or city subway riders in desperate need of a more delightful scent on their daily commute, there’s no shortage of demand for that olfactory addition. Brands looking to deepen the emotional connection with their customer, activate a new project through an intriguing new medium, or create an additional side stream of revenue are also smelling the opportunity. Lifestyle fragrance branding may seem, at first glance, to be an invisible tool, but its impact should not be overlooked.