The latest global hotel trend addresses an increasingly pressing public health concern: clean air. According to World Health Organization data, 9 out of 10 people breathe highly polluted air. Estimates show that an astonishing seven million people die yearly from indoor and outdoor air pollution. Data from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reveals that indoor air pollutant concentrations in the United States can be two to five times higher than outdoor concentrations, and Americans spend approximately 90 percent of their time indoors. 

Exposure to poor indoor air quality especially affects children, the elderly, and those with respiratory or cardiovascular illnesses. Breathing polluted indoor air can lead to negative health effects, such as eye, nose, and throat irritation; headaches; fatigue; respiratory and heart diseases; and cancer. Poor outdoor air quality also contributes to poor indoor air quality. Several metropolitan cities have unhealthy smog levels, and increasing wildfires worsen air quality throughout large geographic areas. 

As air quality becomes a growing global concern, some hotel properties have begun offering rooms with air purifiers and filters, answering the growing consumer demand for cleaner air.

Hotels Offering Clean Air Rooms

Pure Wellness is a wellness company that offers “Pure Rooms” in 300 hotels around the world. These rooms contain portable air purifiers and have been deep cleaned with microbial-resistant, plant-based cleaners. In New Delhi, a city with increasingly polluted air, The Oberoi hotel has had air purifiers installed in every room, with some of them filtering outdoor air as it enters the building. In the U.S., wellness company Delos uses a wall-mounted air filter that reduces microbes and allergens. These purifiers can be found in U.S. Wyndham hotel locations. 

A New Molekule Partnership

Molekule, an innovative air purifier company, partnered with InterContinental San Francisco in 2019 to install Molekule air purifiers in 30 rooms. Molekule’s purifiers plug into a power outlet and get to work to destroy chemicals, bacteria, mold, allergens, and viruses using patented PECO technology. A spokesperson for InterContinental Hotels – citing the 2018 Paradise, California, wildfires that happened three hours away – said that many guests asked for masks and filters, as the wildfires affected the air quality and made it difficult to breathe. This led to InterContinental’s partnership with Molekule to provide cleaner air in its hotel rooms.

More About PECO Technology and a Brief Molekule Review

Molekule has reinvented the way we purify indoor air with its groundbreaking PECO technology. PECO filter technology destroys microscopic pollutants at the molecular level. Molekule purifiers use a low-energy UV-A light that shines on the surface of a nano-catalyst-coated filter, initiating an oxidation reaction that produces hydroxyl molecules. These hydroxyl molecules work to destroy pollutants as air passes through, producing no harmful ozone byproduct and effectively reducing particle pollutants and VOCs. Molekule aims to provide access to clean indoor air for all, no matter where you are. 

Clean-air rooms are becoming more common in hotel chains around the world in light of increasing air quality concerns. If you’re concerned about air quality while you travel, you can now stay at hotels that feature air purifying technology. Molekule air purifiers can be found in the following hotels: White Elephant in Massachusetts, Twin Farms in Vermont, Intercontinental in San Francisco, Ocean House and Weekapaug Inn in Rhode Island.