ROCKVILLE, MD. – Will the standing desk be the next big thing in hotels? I hope so.
There’s plenty of people who use them. I’m thinking of Ted Teng, CEO of the luxury hotel group, Leading Hotels of the World. He’s a big fan. Years, Teng’s had an impressive, custom-made version installed in his office in New York – and he’s hardly alone. When I Googled “standing desk,” nearly 27 million results popped up, suggesting they’re not restricted to a sliver of the population anymore.
A March Smithsonian magazine piece about the benefits of using standing desks points out that they were used by Hemingway, Dickens and Kierdegaard. It’s not just about improved posture. Research shows reduced risk of obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cancer, the article says.
So when I checked into my room last week at IHG’s second-ever EVEN Hotel, one of the first things I did was grab my Mac and walk to the standing desk (see photos).
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Below, you can see how the standing desk is essentially a fold-down self below a white board. But it works – and it’s certainly larger than some of the so-called desks that I’ve had to work on in sexy boutique hotels that aren’t designed for work.
EVEN is the younger, hipper sister brand of Holiday Inn. It was designed with the Whole Foods crowd in mind – people who like to stay fit, may do yoga, know what quinoa is and probably love kale (Even’s restaurant menu has not one but two types of kale salads on its menu).
Unfortunately, I didn’t have the chance to work at my standing desk very long before my first meeting, but it was a enough of a taste to leave me thinking about installing one in my own home office.
My guess: Pretty soon we’ll hear about another chain that’s incorporating a standing desk into their rooms.
Readers: Would you use a standing desk in your room if you found one?
[…]  Ted Tang, CEO of Luxury Hotel Group has even started building standing desks in all rooms in EVEN brand hotels after he fell in love with using his own standing desk and found that option to be […]