NEW YORK—Hyatt Hotels and Resorts wants its guests to breathe easier when they stay at its full-service properties and is creating so-called hypo-allergenic rooms in 125 hotels in the United States, Canada and the Caribbean. Some 2,000 rooms across several Hyatt brands will now be classified as “Respire by Hyatt” hypo-allergenic rooms and carry an estimated $20-$30 premium.
Using purification techniques developed by Pure Solutions NA, LLC, existing inventory will be refreshed so that the rooms provide a 98 percent allergen-free environment, according to Pure.
Tom Smith, vp/rooms for the North American Operations, Hyatt Hotels & Resorts, said the initiative stems from Hyatt’s commitment to providing authentic hospitality and creating a sense of well-being for guests while they are on the road. Similar to Hyatt’s signature “Stay Fit” fitness centers or the organic dishes in its restaurants or special spa treatments, the Respire rooms address a particular lifestyle need.
“An allergy sufferer or asthma sufferer or anyone with respiratory [sic]sensitivity would now be able to experience a great night’s sleep in a hotel,” said Smith.
Research collected from the Center for Disease Control indicated 21% to 25% of the public suffers from asthma or allergies. “We felt there was a great opportunity and what better way to provide that authentic hospitality to our guests than by providing that experience for them, to make them more comfortable,” said Smith.
Hyatt beta-tested an initial concept at a trio of properties. Meeting success with those three models sparked confidence to go brandwide with full-service hotels and the lodging chain and Pure started collaborating on the program.
According to Brian Brault, CEO, Pure Solutions NA, LLC, guests who come to a hotel room have no control over the environment they’re stepping into. “They don’t know what’s been in there, what’s happened in the room. These aren’t perfect environments. The challenges when you have asthma or allergies is that you’re able to do things in your own home and tweak things to make sure you’re comfortable, plus you’re in your own environment. When you’re traveling, you’re kind of at the will of whatever environment you’re walking into. These [Respire] rooms certainly create an environment that’s more comfortable.”
Brault and his team members, working with other vendors, carved a program for Hyatt.
“The look of the room does not change at all,” said Brault. “One of the values for hoteliers of our program is that we’re able to create an environment without changing the look of the room.”
Stepping through the transition, Brault said the first thing Pure does is address the air-handling system, deep cleaning and disinfecting the mechanical parts. It subsequently treats the coils so moisture doesn’t build up, making them less likely to attract dust particulates from the room that could then house bacteria.
A tea tree oil cartridge is installed, and over a period of six months that substance dissipates into the room. “It’s a natural anti-microbial and disinfectant. What that does is keep any kind of bacteria or mold that’s in almost any air-handling system from re-establishing itself,” said Brault.
“We then focus on the surfaces in the room. We deep clean and disinfect all the hard surfaces in the room: the furniture, the walls, the floors, etc., and the surfaces in the bathroom. We also deep clean and sanitize all the soft surfaces in the room: furniture, carpeting, drapes. Once that’s done we then seal the room and have a one-time ‘shock’ treatment (using ozone) to kill any remaining living organisms that are in the room,” said Brault.
The CEO noted although the room is in a very sanitary condition at this point, it’s a continuing process keeping the room that way over an extended period of time. Brault noted there are two ways contaminants travel: either by surface-to-surface contact, e.g., persons touching furniture, resting clothing on surfaces, etc., or coming in contact with small particles that are in the air.
To address this, surfaces, from ceilings to lamp shades, are coated with a bacterial static barrier known as Pure Shield that keeps contaminants from adhering to them, “and therefore starves them,” said Brault. “We’ve made it very difficult for contaminants to survive on a surface; also they are not going to originate in the room, which is very important.”
Brault said the efficacy of the Shield has been tested to exceed 2.5 years. However, Pure slates a room revamp every two years, unless an extraordinary event, e.g., adding new wall covering or furniture, occurs. “If any of that has happened, we need to get in there and make sure that we apply the Shield again,” said Brault.
The air also goes through a purification process, with a mechanism kept in the room. “All of our purifiers are listed by the FDA as a class two medical device, because it has four levels of filtration,” said Brault. These include a pre-filter that takes out dust, a carbon filter for odors, a HEPA-like filtration chamber that filters out fine particulates and an electronic field that surrounds the HEPA filtration chamber “and kills 98% to 100% of all viruses and bacteria that come through the system,” said Brault. “These systems on ‘quiet’ will circulate the air in the room at least twice an hour; on ‘high,’ it will circulate up to five times an hour, which means every 12 to 30 minutes all the air in the room is circulating.”
A final step addresses the bedding. Mattresses and pillows are wrapped in hypo-allergenic encasements that act as a filter down to two microns. “These are designed to protect the guest against dust-mite-related allergy triggers,” Brault said. Smith added the feathers in the Pacific Coast pillows are laundered twice.
Daily care is not an extraordinary effort. “Housekeepers, before they actually begin servicing Respire rooms, are well prepared and educated on the process of maintaining the rooms,” said Smith. “So from a housekeeper’s standpoint there’s not a lot of difference, other than if one of the encasements becomes damaged or torn, they would replace that…if a pillow becomes soiled, we don’t replace it with a non-Respire pillow.”
Well-trained staff
Pure Director of Hospitality Relations Haley Payne created a staff training program, and information on the rooms is tracked so data can be provided back to the hotels on the success of the program.
The cost of the installation is shouldered by Pure. Subsequently, Hyatt and Pure share in the upcharge, with a 60/40 split, respectively.
“From a financial perspective, those paid premiums translate to our company getting paid and Hyatt owners being able to share in that experience. The guests love these rooms; the owners love the whole experience as well because it’s something they’re able to give their guests. It’s a return they’re able to make and in this economy, with some of the challenges that are happening with RevPAR and so forth, being able to do something that both benefits a guest and is able to increase RevPAR is a great combination,” said Brault. “What’s exciting about working with Hyatt is their mission to providing authentic hospitality; it’s something they live every day. This is a very natural fit for them.”
So far the Respire by Hyatt program has been installed in 65 of the 125 hotels Hyatt has targeted in the North American roll out, which Smith expected to be complete by year’s end. Initially, between 2 percent and 5 percent of a hotel’s inventory, depending on the property size, will be dedicated as Respire by Hyatt rooms. The rooms will be in Hyatts, Hyatt Resorts, Grand Hyatts, Park Hyatts, Hyatt Regencys and Andaz hotels.
The effort is being publicized in a variety of ways, including online, through Gold Passport loyalty program mailings, via travel agents, as well as banners and explanatory collateral in Hyatt hotels.
No decision has been made yet if a similar program would be attempted on a global basis. “As we did our three beta tests and then expanded to North America full service, [the current roll out]becomes somewhat of a larger test that decides whether we would go international or put it in Hyatt Place and Hyatt Summerfield Suites,” said Smith.
“We believe in the process. We want to make sure it’s the right process from a marketing standpoint and from an installation standpoint. I think before we take that next step we want to make sure that we have done everything correctly…we do have high hopes of this really being the first hotel company to have this as a brand standard at all of our hotels and we do feel like this is going to take us to a higher level when it comes to accommodating travelers with sensitivities,” Smith concluded.