Hotels Of Whim And Vigor

Ray Stonecipher thought it was hokey when he heard that his biotechnology convention was booked at the Wild Horse Pass Resort and Spa outside Phoenix, Ariz. The idea of a hotel designed around a western theme "sounded like a dude ranch," he says. Instead, the marketing manager from San Jose, Calif., found rooms decorated with authentic baskets and pottery from the Pima and Maricopa tribes; an upscale spa that offered such Indian-inspired treatments as tashogith, a clarification bath using juniper and cypress; and the Kai restaurant, which features dishes like lobster with fry bread, a Native American staple. Says Stonecipher: "It turned out to be anything but hokey."

One of the fastest-growing trends in travel is theme hotels. There are concepts for every taste: from the elegant Library Hotel in midtown Manhattan, where room numbers are based on the Dewey decimal system of classifying books (900.004 for the Asian History room), to the adventurous Jules' Undersea Lodge at the bottom of the Emerald Lagoon in Key Largo, Fla., where guests scuba dive to the entry of their underwater accommodations. "This is a real trend for the traveler who has been there, done that," says Mary Tabacchi, professor of hotel management at Cornell University's School of Hotel Administration. "There's a whole market segment of travelers in Europe, the U.S. and Asia who are no longer just looking for a place to hang their suit and plug in their laptop. They want a hotel with interesting things to do."

The big chains, still trying to recover from the travel slowdown that followed Sept. 11, are experimenting with leitmotivs too. A newly opened Marriott venture in Walnut Creek, Calif., is a fitness freak's paradise. Renaissance ClubSport Hotel and Fitness Resort's 6.5-acre campus offers basketball, volleyball, racquetball and squash courts, outdoor boccie courts, three swimming pools and kickboxing classes. All the guest rooms are outfitted with sets of 2-lb. dumbbells, and power shakes are on the menu. And the Wild Horse itself is the product of a collaboration between the Sheraton and the Maricopas and Pimas. The $125 million resort is located on the Gila River Indian Reservation, wild horses roam freely across the 40-acre property, and tamed ones are available for riding. The place has no tepees and no powwows, but ribs from saguaros poke through the ceilings of the meeting rooms, and murals in the lobby recount tribal legends. "It's impossible for guests to leave here and not take at least a little piece of the Pima and Maricopa culture back with them," says sales and marketing director Jim Curtis. It's too soon to tell how the Wild Horse will fare, but Norman MacLeod, a Sheraton executive vice president, says the company already plans to open more hotels centered on the local history and culture of specific regions.