Do you travel much outside of Atlanta? If you do, and you've tried to do healthy living exercises on the hard floor of your hotel room, you know that its stiff, uncushioned carpets can wreak havoc on your knees, back and elbows during yoga. It's little wonder that more and more hotel patrons are ordering yoga supplies than ever before.
Anyway, that is the thrust of a recent article published by Reuters. A director of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company told the news service that guests are increasingly calling room service for yoga mats, treadmills, exercise bikes and other fitness-related accoutrements.
"Probably fitness equipment is the biggest request we get from guests. 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 " said Vivian Deuschl, the company's corporate vice president.
She noted that, in addition to yoga mats and DVDs, many hotels are going the extra mile to offer patrons almost any fitness-based amenity that one can dream up.
The Ritz-Carlton's hotels offer personal trainers on demand, for example. Others, like the Kimpton Hotel chain, offer an all-day yoga channel and a basket of gratis yoga apparel, as the Kimpton's chief operating officer Niki Leondakis told the news organization.
In the end, it all comes down to providing what guests want – which, lately at least, means all things yoga.
Why are patrons shifting their desires from the mini-bar to the mat? Leondakis offered Reuters a theory based on the large number of baby boomers hitting retirement age.
"Twenty years ago it was wine, dine and work, not about maintaining a healthy lifestyle on the road. People today are looking at work/life balance in a more integrated way," she concluded, quoted by the news source.
Hence the popularity of Georgia yoga classes. Americans of all ages are flocking to yoga – nearly 16 million, according to a survey conducted by the Yoga Journal.
