No smoking — ever.

Once upon a time, no hotel room was complete without an ashtray. Non-smoking rooms eventually appeared and, voila, room categories were born.

Now the choices for guests booking at a small but growing number of hotels include a third category   – the hypo-allergenic room, cleansed within an inch of its life of nearly all surface and air-born impurities. For the estimated one in five people afflicted with allergies or asthma, this is news worth noting.

This month Hyatt became the first hotel chain to mount a grand-scale effort to purify its rooms – at least some of them. More than 60 full-service Hyatts currently offer the brand’s new Respire Hypo-Allergenic rooms, including the Andaz Fifth Avenue, Andaz Wall Street and Grand Hyatt, whose entire 29^th floor is pure Respire, in New York. (more…)