There were so many solid soap / detergent bars once. I don’t want to wash with something that looks like a fruit syrup shipped in a heavy plastic bottle. Just give me a soap, okay?
I don’t really believe that I live in a society of would-be Tarkheenas who only want to bathe in milk and perfume. I think this is created by those persons who control the infrastructure of retailers like Walmart. But in any case, I want soaps that a laundress would use, that look like they were cut off a long extruded hunk of glycerin, not body shampoos.
I use bar soap, and I haven’t had any particular problem finding it. I couldn’t tell you about the “fruit syrup” soaps because I just don’t pay any attention to them.
Local groceries and farmer’s markets often have hand-cut bar soap around here. Might be worth a look. I’m not a fan of body wash for home use.
I, also, use bar soap, except for hand washing in the kitchen. (Where i use a cheap liquid soap.) I have some ivory and some fancy “all natural” stuff i bought when i had a hankering for clove-scented soap. (I bought it, but tried other scents, and really fell in love with a tea tree lime soap.) Both are easy to find, in my experience.
Will you be upset if I give two? Marseille soap is one. Another is, surprisingly, the cheap Soviet-style bars that say “72%” somewhere on the bar or the packaging, looks more or less like this — usually found at the Russian or Asian supermarket if you have one nearby.
I concur with the OP in that I travel a lot, and I wish the hotels would offer bar soap, even those tiny bar soaps. It’s easier to lather, easier to bathe.
Most times there’s the dispenser in the shower for “shower gel” (dude, it’s just soap) and you squick squick some into your hand and do just one pit, then repeat 6 times for the rest of your body. It’s tedious. If I had a bar of effen soap, I’d lather it into my hands and soap my whole body, 123 done. It’s faster and easier, what’s not to like?
Actually, I stayed in a boutique Hyatt hotel last year that had little bars of goat milk soap. I liked it enough that I ordered it for my bathroom. It’s a lot more than the Dove I used to use (four or five bucks for a 3.5 ounce bar versus about a dollar for a bar of Dove soap) but the bars seem to last a whole lot longer.
And I assume that the reason hotels have those dispensers of shower gel, shampoo, conditioner, hand soap and body lotion is that it’s a lot less wasteful than individual little bars of soap and little bottles of the other products.
This is totally the case. More for shampoo/conditioner type things: they throw away those little bottles in the bazillions, so it makes sense to do dispensers. But bar soap is non wasteful, the bars are tiny and there’s no plastic waste at all. It’s super annoying that the bar soap was thrown out with the bathwater. 
I’ve looked into just buying my own tiny bar soap to travel with. I found “hotel bar soap” on Amazon for something like (don’t remember) $17 for one hundred bars. Not sure I could justify storing that much, but maybe.
You do you. You don’t have to use liquid body wash if you don’t want to. There are plenty of brands of bar soap still on sale. I buy cheap bars of soap at Walmart or Dollar General so it’s not like they’re hard to find luxury items.
Still using plain old Ivory soap bars here.
If you’re bringing your own soap, you don’t need to get those little bars. Just buy a plastic soap case and bring a full-size bar of whatever soap you normally use. (Because bar soap isn’t a liquid, you’re not limited by the stupid three-ounce rule.)
Can’t find full size bars of soap lately. I think they are called “Bath” size.
If you put a slit in the plastic wrap covering when you bring it home instead of opening it when needed, your goat milk soap will last even longer!
We’ve been only buying locally made goat milk soap (from one specific maker to be precise) for years and have noticed that it doesn’t build up on the shower like store bought soap does. Our skin feels better and our shower doesn’t get soap scum on the glass. It is well worth the money in our opinions.
Unless you’re using some sort of cloth or that scrunchy thing, I find that bar soap gets used up faster. And, if I’m using the scrunchy thing, liquid soap always gets a lot more lather, enough that I barely need to use any.
Try using one of those tiny little washcloths they so conveniently leave in the bathroom for you. One “squick” into one of those, mush it up with a bit of water, and you can wash aaaa-aaaa-aaallll of yourself.
Also, gel is formulated differently from bar soap. That’s why it’s not, yanno, solid … and that’s why it’s not labeled “soap” cuz it’s not soap.
ETA: or use a scrunchy thing 
(I knew exactly what you meant).
interesting, and makes me want to try goat milk soap.
I use shower gel when there’s nothing else, but my preference is a bar of ivory and a washcloth.
I don’t miss the “ubiquity” of bar soap in public bathrooms at all. The sanitary aspect of using bar soap that gormy strangers have handled would not be appealing.
We use easily obtained bar soap in the tub and shower, liquid soap in a bottle for ordinary handwashing.
Soap is fairly toxic to germs. I’m not worried about who has touched my bar of soap. But i like liquid hand soap in public restrooms because it’s tidier, and i won’t have to crawl around on the floor to look for it.
I prefer bar soap in hotels. (Many have both bar and liquid soap, in my experience.) I guess a lot of cheaper hotels are moving to liquid soap dispensers to cut down on waste. So long as the “shower gel” isn’t full of moisturizers and crap that is hard to rinse off, I’m fine with that. I also always travel with some soap and shampoo left over from prior hotel stays, in case i hate what the place offers. (And in case there’s no soap, i sometimes travel to camping-type places that don’t supply soap, and it’s easier for soap to just live in my overnight kit. But it’s not uncommon for me to dislike the shampoo provided.)
The soap I’m using comes in a paper wrapper, not plastic, so that wouldn’t work for me. And I hadn’t thought about it, but you’re right that the goat milk soap doesn’t build up in the shower. The Dove soap bars would drip little bits of soap all over the soap dish and would remain wet after my shower. The goat milk soap, on the other hand, is dry. (BTW, what is it about goat milk that people are making soap from it? Why goat milk and not cow milk?)