Hilton to Roll Out Allergen-free Rooms

Room Upgrades Help Guests With Asthma

The Hilton hotel chain plans to roll-out some 5,000 allergen-free rooms in 80 cities by the end of this year. These "enviro-rooms" will have hardwood floors, all-cotton beddings, and special wallpaper in which mold cannot grow.

Hilton is “trying to slice and dice the marketplace into smaller and smaller pieces and aggressively pursue those pieces,” said Jan Freitag, vice president of hotel research firm Smith Travel Research. “You have to ask, how big is that market? Obviously, they’ve done their research and they think the market is big enough.”

According to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, some 50 million Americans suffer from allergies.

What sort of premium can be expected for such rooms? Guests at the Hilton Chicago O-Hare Airport hotel currently pay an addition $25 per night for an enviro-room. "We use them quite frequently," said John Silvia, the acting general manager. The hotel has two such rooms that cost roughly $8,000 per room.

Final negotiations are underway between Hilton and Environmental Technology Systems Inc to roll out the allergen-free rooms.

[via Chicago's Daily Herald]