From The New York Times Business Section...
March 27, 2002 BUSINESS TRAVEL

Note to Willy Loman: The business travel routine has changed a bit since those grim road trips and lonesome hotel room trysts that push a sad undercurrent through Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman."

Consider, for one example, the Hotel Monaco's approach to loneliness. "If you want some companionship, or just for fun, we'll send goldfish in a bowl up to your room," said Marylynn Beck, the manager of the Monaco, a high-end boutique hotel in downtown Salt Lake City where business travelers account for about 70 percent of the guests.

"Housekeeping will replace the goldfish every day if you want," she added. "Of course, some guests who stay three or four days want to keep the same fish because they get used to them, especially if they've given them names."

The Monaco Hotel is so pet-friendly that it offers a special bed with nightly turndown service for dogs and cats. The gold-fish program? Uh, they call it Guppy Love.

Now, this might be enough to send old Willy Loman lurching to the minibar. But in some hotels, he'd have to root through the bottles of chilled mineral water and stacks of trail mix and energy bars to reach the gin. Not to mention tripping over the exercise equipment beside the bed.

Struggling to devise new ways to appeal to business travelers after the lodging industry's worst year in over three decades, many hotels are coming up with innovative programs and services that go well beyond the data-port-in-every-room type of expansions that were common in recent years. Healthy living is high on the list.

Starting next week, for example, Omni Hotels will offer rooms in which guests can use exercise equipment to work out privately under its Get Fit program, available at 35 Omni locations in North America. Some of the rooms are permanently fitted with gym-quality exercise machines. In others, portable treadmills and a workout kit with dumbbells, stretch cords, a floor mat and an AM/FM headset are delivered to the room on request for $14 a day.
"We saw a trend with people traveling and worried about trying to keep to their daily working-out routines," said Kimberly Blackmon, a spokeswoman for Omni. "We also found that some people, including some women business travelers, don't like to go to the hotel fitness center. They would just as soon run or work out in their own rooms."

The portable treadmills and related gear are marketed by Fitness Equipment Services, a Salt Lake City company that designed Sole Fitness Equipment, a brand of sturdy, portable exercise gear specifically to be moved about in hotels.

"We're trying to get the mainstream business traveler, the people who go on the road for three or four days and are used to their routine and frustrated when they can't get their workout," said Steve Gasser, the company's vice president for operations. Regular hotel fitness centers are sometimes too crowded, especially in the morning, to allow for a good workout, he added. Many close at night.

In recent years, traveling celebrities willing to pay the price for moving and assembly have had professional exercise equipment delivered to hotel rooms. This led to the idea to design sturdy but portable machines that can be moved from room to room and marketed as a new hotel service, Mr. Gasser said.

Besides the Omni hotels and the Monaco, the company is testing fitness-equipment rooms at some Hilton and Marriott hotels, he said.
 
Hotels are also devising services to accommodate the round-the-clock schedules that increasingly define business trips. For example, Four Points by Sheraton, a hotel at Los Angeles International Airport, recently instituted 24-hour check-in and check-out, a service geared mainly for business travelers who arrive in town at odd hours and don't want to hang around waiting for the standard 3 p.m. check-in time.

With advance notice, guests can check in any time, and checkout time is a full 24 hours later, said Phil Baxter, the general manager.

Hilton's Embassy Suites brand, meanwhile, is planning to begin tests this summer on a concept it is tentatively calling the Creative Room. Taking advantage of Embassy Suites big floor spaces, the rooms will have special lighting, audio controls, furniture and perhaps some electronic gear designed to foster better creative thinking.

Even some of the world's most famous hotels, increasingly dependent on corporate travelers, are trying to stay ahead of the curve.

The Dorchester Hotel in London, which opened in the 1930's as a swanky, hip alternative to the fusty grand hotels of the 19th century, is equipping rooms with what hotel officials say is the most advanced interactive data and entertainment system available anywhere.
The system, which will be in place at the end of April in 90 of the hotel's 250 rooms, has 41-inch plasma video screens and Bose audio systems, with broadband Internet service and a digital library of on-demand movies, TV shows and recordings.

The system, including a wireless keyboard, is meant to be easy to use, said David Wilkinson, the hotel's general manager. But technical support is just down the hall. "We have a chap whom we call an e-butler, on call all the time," he said.