Hotels Tone Up Their Treadmills

AFTER the turkey, mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie, many travelers will be packing some extra pounds along with their luggage. But this holiday season there are fewer excuses than ever for not fighting back while on the road - it's getting easier to work out at hotels.

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Forgot your sweatpants? W Hotels is selling a new line of gear it developed with Puma, the athletic clothing company.

Don't have time for a full workout session? Le Parker Meridien in New York has devised a 27-minute workout.

Don't want to be seen sweating? Westin offers exercise equipment in some guest rooms.

Too late to hit the gym? Not anymore. Most workout facilities at Hyatt Hotels and Resorts are now open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Fitness centers have long been an afterthought in the hotel business, typically consisting of little more than a converted guest room with a treadmill and some dumbbells. But in recent years, hotels have been whipping their gyms into shape. Hilton Hotels began working with Precor, the fitness equipment maker, earlier this year to outfit all of the gyms in its Hilton, Doubletree and Embassy Suites hotels in North America with new equipment, slip-resistant rubber flooring and wall-mounted plasma televisions or personal viewing screens. By the end of this year gyms in 27 of its hotels are expected to be renovated.

Hyatt has spent million this year improving its fitness equipment alone. The move is part of a broader initiative, dubbed Stay Fit at Hyatt, that includes in-room yoga mats and videos. There's even a fitness concierge on call who can recommend a jogging path or supply you with a new workout wardrobe in less than an hour. The company plans to spend .5 million more by mid-2007 on fitness services in its hotels. W Hotels started selling the Puma athletic gear in May and also began offering guests Puma bikes, route maps and iPods loaded with running guides. Other hotels are adding personal trainers, exercise classes and expanding their health clubs.

The new workout offerings are in part a response to increasingly demanding guests who want to be able to work out on the road the same way they do at home. But many hotels are also viewing expanded fitness centers as a means of generating revenue from what used to be considered a money-losing perk.

Hyatt charges .99 for its 45-minute yoga videos. W is promoting business in its hotel boutiques and online by selling Puma's jackets (5), shirts (), shorts () and sneakers with a hidden slot for a key card (0). The James hotel in Chicago recently started offering personal training sessions developed by the fitness guru Jim Karas. Costs range from for a 30-minute "express-o" workout that blends cardio and strength training to 0 for a one-hour custom workout based on the guest's goals, interests and abilities.

Most hotels insist that these offerings are designed simply to provide guests with more choices. They point out that use of the fitness club is typically included in the price of the hotel stay or available for a nominal fee. But revenue statistics suggest that health clubs, which increasingly include spas, have been a growing source of income for hotels. Hotel revenue from health clubs grew 4.07 percent from 1999 to 2005, according to PKF Hospitality Research. By contrast, room revenue grew 1.42 percent and revenue from golf fell 1.27 percent.

Elaborate fitness facilities can be expensive, especially those with spas attached. So some hotels allow people who live nearby to buy memberships in their gyms. "Our membership gives us money we can do things with in the fitness center that other hotel fitness centers can't do," said Mark Natale, director of the health club at Le Parker Meridien in New York, which has a large local membership base. The hotel recently spent 0,000 on gym improvements including equipment for its new Quickie workout routine that fatigues your body in less than a half hour - a computerized weightlifting circuit memorizes your program and tracks improvements.

Marriott has built an entire hotel concept around the fitness club, financed in part by local memberships. Its new Renaissance ClubSport hotels will combine the amenities of its Renaissance hotels with a large, full-service health club. The prototype, in Walnut Creek, Calif., has a basketball court, group exercise classes and three swimming pools, in addition to cardiovascular and other workout equipment.

"A typical business hotel could not afford to develop all those features without a club component," said Scott Pickert, senior vice president of Renaissance ClubSport. "Selling memberships allows us to build a higher quality club and higher quality hotel and make it all available for hotel guests." The Walnut Creek hotel has just 175 rooms, while the club's membership consists of 9,000 people paying 5 to 0 a month for individual, couple or family memberships.

STILL, some hotels keep their fitness centers closed to outside membership. "Guests don't want to wait for treadmills and face a gym full of people," said Brad Wilson, chief executive of the James Hotel Group. "We're really more about a guest experience."

Part of the challenge for hotel chains is to keep the fitness offerings consistent across hotels of various shapes and sizes. Since November 2003, Westin Hotels and Resorts has spent more than million to redesign its fitness centers. It worked with Reebok to develop its new offerings, which include sleek exercise centers as well as hotel rooms outfitted with treadmills, workout DVDs, resistance tubing, stability balls and yoga mats. A customer choosing a room with this gear pays about a night over regular rates.

Of course, there are still some pretty wimpy hotel gyms out there. To avoid those and find one well equipped for burning some post-Thanksgiving Day calories, check out FitforBusiness.com or Healthytravelnetwork.com, which review hotel fitness centers.

Ruth Sucato, a psychotherapist from La Jolla, Calif., said she was looking forward to working out at the newly renovated fitness center at the Fairmont in Washington this month when she visits her daughters. She planned to try out the new Kinesis machine, installed in a 0,000 renovation that also included adding new cardiovascular equipment with personal televisions and knee-friendly rubber flooring. "I was putting on my slacks, wondering how long these are going to fit," she said.

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