Hotel guests: get me a treadmill
Hotel guests are increasingly asking for in-room yoga videos or recumbent bicycles over late-night mints to shape them up for that business meeting, reports Reuters.
"It's the biggest preoccupation of business travelers besides getting their work done, so we try to make fitness available on any basis they ask for," said Vivian A. Deuschl, Ritz-Carlton.
In-room fitness options aren't limited to yoga mats or Pilates DVDs, Deuschl says. Both, however, are in high demand at most of the company's 78 hotels worldwide.
"We do folding treadmills and folding recumbent bikes," she said. "The only things we can't bring to the rooms are heavy weights."
Deuschl said women business travelers are particularly keen on exercising their in-room options.
"Just as a lot of women don't like to sit by themselves in a restaurant, a lot of them don't want to work out in a room full of strangers," she said.
Celebrities also tend to prefer their exercise in private.
The Kimpton chain of boutique hotels has provided guests in-room 24-hour yoga channel classes and a basket of yoga gear since 2003, according to president and COO Niki Leondakis.
Pilates and meditation classes followed. Hula hoops and jump ropes can be had for the asking.
Leondakis believes the modern business traveler's focus on wellness coincides with the aging of the baby boomers.
"Twenty years ago it was wine, dine and work, not about maintaining a healthy lifestyle on the road," she said. "People today are looking at work/life balance in a more integrated way."
By David Wilkening
David
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