Hotels Begin to Focus on In-Room Fitness
This seems like a given but hotels have been for years focused on elaborate public gyms inside their hotels. But now brands like Hilton are the first to innovate around in-room fitness, capitalizing on the very large niche audience that prefer solo fitness.
With the rise of apps for solo meditation and body-weight exercises, this makes so much sense. The idea is making exercise accessible for one of the toughest times, being on-the-go or traveling. For those that travel a lot for their job, this is critical. We often make excuses for not exercising or living healthy when we’re traveling or on-the-go. In May, Hilton became one of the first hotels to offer in-room fitness with 11 pieces of workout equipment.
The workout gear includes:
Indoor Wattbike bicycle
Gym Rax
Training station that lets users tackle body-weight moves with TRX straps.
Fitness kiosk, a touch-screen display that offers more than 200 videos, including tutorials on all the equipment, cycling, high-intensity interval training and yoga classes.
Hilton’s choices came from customer feedback that they’d be willing to pay more for convenience of fitness in their room. They also took into consideration a significant study from Cornell University. This report showed that “46 percent of guests expected to work out in the fitness center during their stay, but only 22 percent actually did so.”
The rooms were built much bigger to include enough space to move around the room and store the equipment.
The partnership came about after a survey by the hotel last year found that 70 percent of global travelers struggle to maintain their wellness routines on the road, said Sarah Lipton, the brand’s global director of marketing and management, and that 51 percent of Westin guests are likely to have gym memberships.
The hotel brand Westin also had jumped on the bandwagon. The brant itself conducting a significant survey last year that noted more than 70 percent of global travelers struggle to maintain their wellness routines on the road, said Sarah Lipton, the brand’s global director of marketing and management, and that 51 percent of Westin guests are likely to have gym memberships.
This proves gyms and fitness across the hotel ecosystem shouldn’t be an afterthought. With the rise of wearable tech like fitness watches and on-the-go heart monitors, this shows fitness is only going to become closer to us and convenience is half the battle of getting up off the couch each day. Enjoy your next vacation!