Hotels are becoming the favored places for retailers and consumer products to bolster their brands

Companies are always looking for ways to extend their brands to new customers. That’s particularly true of retail and consumer brands at a time when the drawing power of physical stores has been diluted by the proliferation of online options that accounted for $349.9 billion in sales in 2016, a 15.6% increase over 2015 and representing 11.7% of total retail sales last year (excluding items not normally purchased online, like fuel and cars), according to Commerce Department estimates.