Upscale Hotel Brands Are Forgoing FitTech to Focus on Holistic Wellness

Wellness is now mainstream in luxury hospitality, and it's becoming more prevalent in the upper-upscale category as well. For example, Hilton just unveiled a new in-room gym design, and Westin debuted its new partnership with boutique cycling company Peloton. Not that people always actually work out during their hotel stay, of course. A recent Cornell University Center for Hospitality Research study showed that 46 percent of guests intend to use hotel fitness amenities, but only 22 percent actually do. Therefore, the challenge for hotels is finding creative ways to motivate guests to do what they say they aspire to do, in an effort to provide a transformative travel experience that extends beyond the hotel stay. Surprisingly, the rise of “FitTech” was supposed to revolutionize the hotel health and fitness experience. That's not happening either, at least not at any kind of scale. One reason is because clinical studies are showing that the health benefits for using fitness wearables are underwhelming, and even anti-productive at times. In a two-year University of Pittsburgh research trial, “Effect of Wearable Technology Combined With a Lifestyle Intervention on Long-term Weight Loss,” test subjects were separated into two exercise groups. Both groups were provided with traditional weight management strategies, and one of them was provided with fitness wearables. The r