A room--with nothing to sneeze about

[Guest guest]

A room--with nothing to sneeze about

Chicago Tribune*

BY ALFRED BORCOVER

Special to the Tribune

December 23, 2007

http://www.chicagotribune.com/travel/chi1223insiderdec23,0,7457247.st

ory?track=rss

Slowly, ever so slowly, hotels are recognizing that travelers who

suffer from severe asthma and allergies triggered by dust mites,

mold, smoke, pollen, chemicals and animal dander might like to stay

in hypoallergenic rooms -- for a price.

With as many as one in four travelers coughing, sneezing and

wheezing their way through the day, or night, the thought crossed a

few minds to develop hotel rooms that are free of all the nasty

stuff that causes guests to feel as if their airways are clogging.

Not that many didn't feel that way before checking in. But to find

relief in a hotel room, what a surprise.

Whether the environmentally friendly rooms become as prevalent as

non-smoking rooms and floors in lodging establishments is another

matter. Any relief from bad air and bacteria-ridden rooms is a

godsend to travelers with serious asthmatic conditions.

" Allergy patients suffer a lot whether it's sneezing, nasal

congestion or a runny nose, but more severe patients could have an

asthma exacerbation and that could be life threatening, " said Dr.

Kris McGrath, an allergist and associate professor of clinical

medicine at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of

Medicine. " So an unsuspecting guest [entering a room vacated hours

before by a guest traveling with a cat] could have an asthma attack

triggered by cat protein, which is very potent. "

The fact that a cat or dog stayed in the room you are about to

occupy is not as far-fetched as you would think. A survey by the

American Hotel & Lodging Association showed that 50 percent of all

responding hotels allow pets. And AAA's " Traveling With Your Pet "

lists more than 13,000 pet-friendly lodgings.

For the asthmatic looking for relief and not a surprise at a hotel,

Pure Rooms or Enviro-Rooms are the answer. Both are cleansed by

different processes to rid a room of disgusting germs and keep it

allergen-free, but finding a bacteria/virus-free, mite-free, pollen-

free, dust-free, chemical-free, dander-free room is a challenge

because the number of hotels that offer these special rooms is

minuscule.

Pure Rooms, which can be found in 34 hotels nationwide with a total

of 400 treated rooms, is the brand of Pure Solutions NA, a firm

located near Buffalo. " At this point, we're handling individual

hotels, " said Brault, the firm's president, CEO and founder,

who described his venture as a new industry. Among the hotels are

Marriotts in polis, Md., and Miami; the Peninsula in Beverly

Hills, Calif.; Crowne Plaza in Pittsburgh; Four Seasons in Boston;

Hampton Inn in Sarasota, Fla., and Millennium Broadway in New York.

But chains are coming on board too.

Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, which has tested a full floor of Pure

Rooms in Chicago-suburban Lisle, and in its Miami Airport and

Peachtree City, Ga., properties, plans to have a number of Pure

Rooms installed in its 20 company-managed hotels in 2008, and then

in 200 franchised hostelries in 2009.

Wyndham is the largest chain to commit to Pure Rooms. " We received

favorable comments when we test-marketed the rooms so we decided to

roll it out for all our properties, about 10 percent of the rooms as

well as conference rooms, " said Faith , Wyndham's vice

president of product development and innovation. " Guests will pay

from 7 to 10 percent more for these rooms "

NYLO, a new mid-priced hotel group based in Atlanta, offering loft-

style rooms, will have a floor of Pure Rooms in its Plano (near

Dallas), Tex., hotel, opening this month, and in two other

properties opening next year in Warwick, R.I., and Broomfield,

Colo., near Denver. The group said it's committed to have 50

properties with Pure Rooms in expanding markets in North America by

2010.

As NYLO did its market research, allergy-free rooms came up as one

of the amenities the hotels should have, said , the

firm's CEO. " Pure Rooms can command a higher rate because people are

willing to pay a little more to have that amenity -- a $10 premium.

It does cost more to maintain these rooms. "

It takes time to educate hoteliers and their management about the

new Pure technology, the energy savings they derive and the need to

become more environmentally friendly as they figure out

cost/benefits factors, Brault said.

That, Brault said, includes the air-handling system, all hard and

soft surfaces, and water supply. Mattresses and pillows get special

hypoallergenic encasements. The room is shocked with a very high

concentration of ozone that kills any remaining living organisms.

The room is then misted with Pure Shield, a substance that bonds

with everything in the room and leaves a static barrier that

prevents bacteria and viruses from adhering to anything. A special

FDA-approved purifier continually cleanses the air.

Using a more traditional room purifying approach in a pilot project,

Environmental Technology Solutions of Glen Ellyn created

two " environmentally friendly rooms for guests with allergy-related

sensitivities " in the Hilton O'Hare Airport. The Enviro-Rooms proved

to be so popular that Hilton added 11 more to its O'Hare inventory.

" We call the rooms green-compliant, " said Nardella,

president and CEO of the firm, which specializes in mold remediation

and indoor air quality. " What we did was analyze everything in the

room, and instead of trying to encapsulate it, or put a purifier in

to correct the problems, we just eliminated them. We have no carpets

in our rooms, no drapes. By getting rid of the carpets and the

drapes, we were actually able to reduce the bacterial colony count

in the room as much as 92 percent. "

Nardella said his firm spent four years researching the chemical

makeup of all the products in the room, and ultimately gutted the

room, chucking the floor coverings, wall coverings, drapes,

furniture and bedding. The room was then rebuilt using special wood

flooring, wall coverings, fabrics, furniture, paints, adhesives and

cleaning products. Window treatments are made of wood. Also added to

the room, Nardella said, was an air purification system developed by

NASA to scrub the air in space shuttles and an air monitoring system.

Allergist McGrath noted that ridding hotel rooms of carpeting,

curtains and drapes -- havens for dust mites and other nasty stuff

such as microscopic cat dander -- can help people with severe

allergy problems.

Other hotel companies -- Kimpton, a San Francisco-based boutique

group, for example -- welcome guests with pets. But, said a Kimpton

spokeswoman, they are assigned to designated rooms on designated

floors. And, after the guest and pet check out, the room is " deep-

cleaned. "

Travelers concerned about air quality can start by checking

http://www.freshstay.com , which bills itself as " the world's

leading directory of 100 percent smoke-free hotels. " One of the

site's sponsors is Pure Rooms.

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