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5 Ways to Make Your Next Hotel Stay Healthier

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Healthier Hotel Stay

My husband and I travel a lot.

It’s mostly for business, and we usually enjoy it, but what we don’t enjoy are the hotels. Bleach cleaners, mold, carpeting, polyester (plastic) sheets, old pillows. It’s a toxic load neither of us want on our bodies and neither of us look forward to. It’s one of the pieces of our own journey that led us to start Healthy Vacation Club, but we’ve had to learn how to cope with what’s available until we can cover the world with healthy vacation homes and hotels.

What do we do?

1. We choose better hotels.

We’ve tried a lot of hotels, unfortunately. We’ve been to highly rated resorts that had been soaked in bleach and large brand hotels covered in mold. Don’t be afraid to walk away, there are always more hotels. In our experience, we’ve always gotten our money back… even if it one time took 6 months and multiple calls.

Our main hotel has ended up being Hilton, basically because we’ve had the fewest problems there. Not surprisingly, we recently learned that:

“Gary Collinge, general manager of the Hilton Vancouver Airport, says all Hilton hotels follow standards regarding eco-friendly cleaning solutions, including non-toxic, non-phosphate, non-chlorine and biodegradable products.” – Hotelier Magazine

Apart from Hilton, we’ve also had pretty good luck with Hyatt and Marriott. Of course, they’re all far from perfect, and I wouldn’t call any of them “healthy”, but they are doing some good things that make it a bit easier for us to stay there compared to other hotels. I would love the opportunity to work with any of them to start pushing the hotel industry to a place more focused on wellness. For us, it’s not about competing, it’s about making change happen quickly in the vacation industry.

I still don’t love the chemicals, carpets, VOCs, polyester sheets, and chlorinated water, but at least my thyroid isn’t being attacked by chlorine bleach cleaners. And since I have Hashimoto’s, that’s important for me.

2. We cook our own food.

For longer stays we’ll book with a resort or long-term stay hotels that have a kitchen. They’ll often have stainless steel pans, but we usually pack small pan and wooden spatula just in case they only have Teflon pans and plastic spatulas. If we can drive to the hotel, then we always bring our Instant Pot Mini, regardless of if the hotel has a kitchen or not. We do always make sure we have a fridge in the room. Hilton has been good about being able to bring a fridge up to the room if there is none to begin with.

We also make sure we know where we’re going to buy food. That means, depending on which State we’re in, we look for a Sprout’s, Lucky’s Market, or Whole Foods, and pick a hotel in that area of the city. We book as close as possible to the event we’re attending, but for larger conferences like Natural Products Expo West, in LA, where we usually need to book a hotel that’s 5-7 miles from the event, we’ll pick the one that puts a Sprouts on our way to the hotel.

3. We bring our own air filter.

I like the Air Oasis filters. In addition to getting rid of the dust that many times is attached to flame retardants and other chemicals, the Air Oasis can also break up VOCs. Basically, ripping apart toxic chemicals into their base elements.

If we’re flying, we bring the travel-sized Air Oasis and if by car, we usually bring our Air Oasis 1000. Either way it’s the first thing we set up and turn on after checking in to the hotel.

4. We bring castile soap.

It’s something simple, but we don’t want to use scented hand soaps, body soaps, and dish soap (if we have a kitchen). Instead, we have a travel sized bottle of castile soap with us and use it for everything. My husband even uses it as toothpaste, but that’s just gross! 😉

5. We bring PJ’s and socks.

Admittedly, we’re not the best at remembering PJ’s, so we often improvise, but I think this one is worth mentioning. Since we’re sleeping on sheets that usually are made of polyester (plastic) and have been washed in chemicals we know nothing about, we like to have something to keep our bodies from absorbing all of that. Same goes for socks. I try to have socks with me even if I won’t be wearing any shoes that need socks. Being from Europe, where we don’t carpet rooms, I find them disgusting. Since we don’t know what powders and cleaners have been used on the carpet, we would rather protect our feet with socks.

Emelie Kamp is an entrepreneur, licensed nutritional counselor, wellness coach, green living coach, author of The Sugar Story, creator of the Dark Chocolate Diet and health industry consultant - working towards transforming the way we feel and the way we see ourselves. Be encouraged, be empowered, live your purpose.

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Who are You?

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Everyone has a story. Our stories are what color in the details of who we are and how we show up to the world around us, and how we engage with it/them: relationships, jobs, schools, etc. We were all intentionally and intelligently designed to be unique individuals.  When we discover who we are, where we came from, and what we were designed for in this lifetime, we find the freedom in seeing ourselves in our truest identity.  It is in this freedom, our personal story can be expressed organically and experienced by others.

The messages of our stories are often communicated and translated through the ways we impact and interact with the people we are privileged to have in our lives— whether for a short while, or for a lifetime. When we discover who we are and the purpose we were uniquely designed to fulfill, we begin to not only value ourselves, we also begin to value others around us at the same capacity of which we value ourselves. Our intentions, interactions, and impact become more authentic, vulnerable, and hold a greater potential to add life changing value to the lives we are privileged to be a part of.

So how do we begin to discover who we are at our core and what we were designed to live for? Awareness is the first step. Taking an inventory of our character, our morals, our values, our tendencies, patterns, feelings, passions, attitudes, relationships can be key to self discovery. These are the fruit from seeds that have been planted in the soil of our young minds from the moment we were even conceived– unconsciously. Taking a brave trip down memory lane to take a good look at where we’ve historically come from, is another key factor to self discovery. These impactful experiences, whether big or small, manifest in our idiosyncrasies. Some of which would be ideal to change, because we and others around us, deserve them to be changed.

We as humans will inevitably share similarities. The genetic and neurological composition of our individual beings however, are uniquely different. When we take a good look at who we are at our core there is a lot to discover about how intentionally and intelligently we were uniquely designed to be, and the life we were destined to uniquely live; serving the world around us at different capacities and various ways.

Here are some questions to ask yourself…
1. Who are you?
2. Where did you come from?
3. What were your designed for here on earth?
4. How were you created to impact the world around you?
5. What does your unique design have, to solve a problem that exists in the community that surrounds your life?
6. When are you going to venture out into a courageous journey of fully living at your greatest potential and impacting at your optimal?
7. What or who do you need in your life, to make this happen? (I call this, resourcing up!)

Sometimes, we need someone in our corner coming alongside us through the journey of self discovery. For those interested in discovering their truest identity and the possibility of unlocking their greatest potential, connect with me! I’d be happy to be a part of that journey and see you thrive as the best version of yourself!

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