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Mobility Stories
Healthy Hotels
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You make it a point to eat right, exercise and do your part to keep your home environmentally friendly. So why shouldn't you enjoy that same standard of healthy living when you're on the road?

You should, according to a number of small boutique hotels and large chains, which are experimenting with everything from new menu choices and in-room workout options to creating non-toxic environments in the hopes of attracting health-conscious travelers.

Fitness programs are one of the most popular healthy living amenities, particularly for business travelers who try to keep a regular workout routine while jetting in between cities. Hotels are going beyond offering access to traditional fitness centers or swimming pools, however, and are now introducing in-room workout options to give guests greater flexibility.

The Westin hotel chain, for example, is now offering the WestinWORKOUT room, which gives guests access to state-of-the-art equipment like treadmills or spinning cycles from the privacy of their own rooms. The WestinWORKOUT rooms also come with Reebok Pilates and Cycle DVDs, dumbbells, sports magazines and bottled water.

Hilton Garden Inn hotels offer the Stay Fit Kit—a Pilates band, Yoga mat, weights and abs ball—for in-room use. Other hotels will deliver freestanding fitness equipment to your room upon request.

Menu choice is another area where travelers are seeing lots of health-conscience improvements. Many hotel chains have revised their menus to eliminate items with trans fats, but some are taking the healthy living concept even further.

Hyatt Hotels offer new StayFit room service menus emphasizing fresh, locally-grown ingredients with items such as white bean and tomato soup and apple, endive and feta cheese salad. Radisson Hotels & Resorts offer the Tasteful Choices menu, which offers more than 15 breakfast, lunch and dinner items and was designed in collaboration with the Culinary Institute of America.

For its part, Loews Hotels has the Healthy Kids program, which offers special drinks, menu options and fun activities to help promote healthy habits for kids.

With allergies and toxins becoming a growing concern, hotel chains are also looking at ways to provide a germ-free experience. Some are putting in air purification systems for example those from such companies as Pure Room and Environmental Technology Solutions Inc., which rid rooms of germs, animal dander and dust mites. Among the hotels investing in Pure Rooms are Marriott, Millennium Broadway in New York, Four Seasons and Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, among others.

America's Best Inns & Suites offers the Evergreen Room, which has both air and water purification systems as well as allergen barrier bedding. Other hotels are enlisting live plants to clean the air naturally, switching over to eco-friendly cleaning products and using water filtration systems. The use of things like organic cotton sheets and nontoxic wall coverings also bolster the healthy guest experience.

Interested in finding a healthy hotel? One resource to check out is The "Green" Hotels Association, which offers a directory of approved vendors.

You'll find yourself looking for one more reason to hit the friendly skies—jetting has never been so good for you!

Like this article? Check out these other Mobile Warrior Tips

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