Traveling is fundamentally positive for one’s wellbeing. It elevates the mood. It facilitates personal growth or transformation. And increasing evidence points to how a change in scenery and novel experiences help the memory centers of the brain to stay active, indicating travel as a leading endeavor to stave off dementia.

As more and more people all over the world become cognizant of the positive impact of travel on health, this will propel even greater numbers of people to venture abroad – a megatrend that bodes well for hospitality, travel and tourism over the next two decades.

But there are no free lunches in this world, and the tradeoff is that one of the most common means of reaching new destinations in order to attain the abovementioned wellbeing benefits – that is, soaring through the air in a tin can – actually does a lot of damage to the body. With my glass eternally half full and never half empty, though, I deem this loss inherent to air travel to be hospitality’s gain by opening the doors for hotels to come to the rescue with innovative wellness programs that help restore health after a guest arrives.

Know the Problem to Design the Fix

For those of you who aren’t closet physiology nerds like me (read: everyone), the TL;DR is that just about everything under the broad, ambiguous banner of ‘wellness’ will help incoming guests after a flight. Any which you slice it, getting guests more engaged with various wellness activities will help to offset the shortcomings of air travel, and it’s oftentimes more a matter of how those experiences are merchandized in order to optimize for customer adoption.

Nevertheless, understanding a bit about what is happening to the body when it’s thrust into the clouds will help hotels to design more prescriptive and effective treatments. As someone who helps luxury and upscale hotels build wellness and longevity programs, the way I would rephrase this to the people who sign checks is that the words ‘prescriptive’ and ‘effective’ when operationalized are essentially synonymous with sizeable revenue increases and brand differentiation. With that said, here’s the full cluster of what’s happening under the hood when you fly:

1. Cabin Pressure: The fuselages of said tin cans are pressurized at the equivalent altitude of between 6,000 and 8,000 feet, resulting in a reduced partial pressure of oxygen (from approximately 160 millimeters of mercury to 120mmHg, or a 25% drop in PO2). For clarification, the relative concentration of O2 in the air remains the same as sea level at 21%, but you are breathing in less air with each breath because of the lower atmospheric pressure. Doing this for several hours (or longer if you’re going transoceanic) means that you experience minor, albeit temporary, hypoxia or lower blood oxygen saturation. On the subcellular level, this eventually translates into slightly less O2 available for mitochondria to access for the electron transport chain, resulting in more unstable combustion and more free radical production. These free radicals are one of the root atomic causes of bodily inflammation which then leads to macro-level effects like greater susceptibility to viruses or bacterial infection following less-efficient energy production in immune cells, grogginess or reduced cognition following less-efficient energy production in neurons (or their supportive glial cells), muscular weakness and so on. Perhaps you notice this effect when disembarking and the walk from the gate to baggage claim is mired by all-round lethargy as your body slowly reacclimatizes to low-altitude air pressure.
2. Ionizing Radiation: Air travel has only really existed for the past century and human evolution hasn’t caught up yet (save for perhaps a few small, isolated populations living high in the mountains). Most people aren’t genetically (or epigenetically) adapted for being in the upper atmosphere where we are bombarded by so much more harmful, invisible wavelengths of light and radioactive particles emanating from the sun or other cosmic entities that the ionosphere reflect away from the ground. Up in the stratosphere, some of these bounce of the plane, some pass right through us, but a select few ricochet off molecules lodged within or surrounding one of three dozen trillion cells in each of our bodies. And that’s more than enough to cause just a bit more DNA damage, aberrant protein folding or collagen matrix disruption than what our internal maintenance systems are used to handling.
3. Sleep Disruptions: This is the most well-understood mechanism underlying the negative effects of air travel on health, and yet it’s third on my list! Don’t get me wrong, lack of sleep is a leading contributor to all-cause mortality and there’s no better way to discombobulate good sleep patterning than to have to wake up early to catch a flight, change time zones or take a redeye and expect to get even a morsel of rest while stuffed like sardines in your economy class seats. While it’s debatable whether cabin pressure or ionizing radiation induce a greater health deficit than sleep disruptions, this is third simply because most people aren’t factoring in the first two, both of which can have perilously compounding, yet often not consciously registered, effects for a traveler with preexisting sleep issues.
4. Travel Stress: Anxiety in and around air travel is quite common. You have very precise timing for ground transportation and departure schedules, or you potentially miss your flight. You have airport security checkpoints, baggage drop-off, customs, entry forms and lineups everywhere. Then you have the nuisance of delays. Traveling with young kids? Forget about it. While mindfulness practitioners may be able to reframe this as ‘eustress’, for most of us this subliminal metronome of unease is yet one more factor that amps up internal inflammation.
5. Garbage Food: For all of us plebs who aren’t yet at the status level to glide from snazzy airport lounge to first class pod, airport and airline foods are on average a nightmare from a nutritional standpoint. Extortive prices aside, most airports are what we would now call a ‘food swamp’ – lots of options available but most of them from an ingredient and cooking quality standpoint are best described by the acronym for ‘ship high in transit’. Ditto for what’s available in the cabin, where meals are carb-heavy, laden with ultra-processed foods, consist of nonorganic ingredients and use reheating methods like microwaving that can drastically lower nutrient density. And we’ve yet to even throw alcohol or microplastics from bottled water into the picture. All told, if you aren’t a luxury air traveler, your best option is often to not eat at all (caveat emptor: only take this advice if you have ‘metabolic flexibility’ and can go without a dose of sugar for a while). Also consider that much of this consumption during the soup-to-nuts air travel experience is in fact ‘stress eating’ – a salve for the anxious limbic brain rather than an actual metabolic need for more externally sourced calories.
6. Poor Mobility: Lest we forget that before civilization, our ancestors almost never sat in chairs, preferring a deep squat, full recline or the occasional fallen tree log. Hence, as the phrase of the day goes: sitting is the new smoking. The most talked about aspect of this is that sitting lowers your basal metabolic rate (BMR) which then promotes weight gain because you are burning fewer calories per hour. Second is the hunched posture by curving the upper back forward too much alongside increased spinal vertebrae compression, exacerbating or directly leading to shoulder, neck and lower back injuries. Next might be the reduced lymphatic drainage – that is the removal of toxins from bodily tissues – stemming from fewer total skeletal muscle contractions per day, which act to literally squeeze out fluids into the blood like wringing a wet towel. Fourth would be the effects on breathing through said upper back hunch that limits chest expansion as well as by hindering the full range of diaphragmatic expansion through the lower abdomen. Finally, people should be deeply wary of how prolonged sitting warps the range of motion at the hip, knee and ankle joints, shortening and loosening tendons and ligaments in dysfunctional ways or possibly disrupting the neuromuscular connection within specific muscle striations or whole muscular units. Combined with the hunched posture, a classical physiotherapy term to describe this unnatural bodily distension is ‘upper cross and lower cross syndrome’. Unlike working from an office or home where you can stand up whenever you want and move around a bit, being packed into steerage prevents adequate mobility and regular movement, which can then accelerate injuries when exercising or when suddenly yanking your luggage off the carousel.

Unconscious and Ironic

Let’s get one thing straight: despite all the health drawbacks, I am forever grateful for the modern-day privilege of being able to traverse the world, meet so many incredible people and experience the profound diversity of this world as enabled by the aviation industry. Air travel isn’t going away, nor should it. My belief is that the more people from different cultures, lands and nations come together, the more likely we are to realize peaceful means of resolving our grievances. Yes, carbon emissions and personal health qualms aside, I see the travel and hospitality industries as key proponents of world peace.

With this schmaltzy disclaimer aside, it should now be abundantly clear from the above that air travel is unhealthy for the body. Oftentimes, however, these stressors are not felt consciously in the moment because they can be masked by the adrenaline-tinged excitement of arriving at a new destination or because our minds have trouble inferring causality from a multifactorial scenario where differently weighted inputs compound upon each other. Without that conscious feedback and the mindful awareness of how a long-haul flight or, worse, multi-leg trip is damaging various organs or tissues, it can be hard to convince someone that they should seek immediate wellness assistance upon arrival at the hotel.

Instead, we use terms like ‘jet lag’ or ‘poor sleep’ to more reductively describe the need for wellness treatments or longevity interventions to bring the body and brain back into harmony so that all guests can make the most of their time while abroad. Whether that involves being in the best possible mood during a vacation or having optimal cognition during a business trip, literally everyone who flies in an airplane will benefit from some combination of ‘post-flight recovery’.

Personally, I find it quite ironic nowadays that a large part of my career as a luxury hotel consultant involves helping properties and brands build wellness and longevity programs as well as deliver keynote speeches on this subject matter, and yet, in order to do so, I have to get on a plane to visit the client or attend the conference.

Hardly a special, little snowflake on this front, though, it seems like most professionals these days whose jobs involve frequent travel are in a damned if you do, damned if don’t situation. Air travel is a necessity for modern living and the economy, so it falls on each and every one of us to adjust our lifestyles by incorporating more wellness practices when traveling in order to compensate for the negative health effects.

Getting Prescriptive with Specific Guest Suggestions

Listing off the whole list of the cross-disciplinary wellness amenities that will work as part of a post-flight recovery program edges into the domain of secret sauce, so apologies for withholding some of the work I’ve done in this regard (it would also put this article well over 3,000 words to adequately explain). Speaking more generally, what I would advise is have a mix of simple-yet-universal and ad hoc recovery amenities (either baked into the nightly rate or upsold) as well as offering more advanced treatments that tackle just one or two of the six main areas where air travel causes harm.

As the simplest of those ubiquitous actors, consider herbal teas – chamomile, mint, dandelion root, hibiscus or any sort of custom-branded blend. Most of these are positioned as evening relaxation or sleep promotion tools. Of course, they act in this manner, but oftentimes can also have second-order rejuvenation effects. The first one here, for instance, chamomile is extremely high in concentration of a powerful antiaging molecule called apigenin which is being studied for its ability to sharply reduce oxidative stress as well as potentially alter what proteins are expressed within various cells. (FYI: apigenin is also quite concentrated in parsley, so grab yourself some tabbouleh.)

Another simple-yet-universal activity would be to make supplements available in the sundry or grab-and-go onsite store. Like herbal teas, many of these like sodium ascorbate (vitamin C in its proper form), astaxanthin or even melatonin, work across a variety of mechanisms to restore health besides only helping induce sleep.

Lastly on this front, a classic fruit tray as an arrival gift (organic only if possible) is not only pleasurable to the eyes and stomach but can pack a serious punch of naturally structured antioxidants and polyphenols (read: the food matrix) that will work in a variety of mechanisms to untangle the mess that air travel elicits. As this is something that hotels are already quite adept at handling, it’s then a matter of shifting the messaging of this amenity to be centered around nourishment and restoration.

A topic for discussion that can be a whole separate article, but perhaps you can also augment said fruit tray with some synergistic supplements? Such an amenity can be quite scalable. As an example, my favorite synergy here is adding a bit of maqui berry powder to blueberries wherein this esoteric fruit from the Chilean temperate rainforest comes packed with delphinidin which boosts the activity of the anthocyanin pterostilbene which represents one of the primary molecules that makes blueberries so great for health.

Next, to illustrate what it would mean to get prescriptive, consider hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) which is emerging as a popular, high-tech addition to luxury health clinics and longevity-focused hotels. These chambers are outfitted with 100% oxygen concentration, and as such the treatments can be marketed to explicitly address the hypoxia brought about by a plane’s high-altitude cabin pressure.

Part of this battle will be customer education – for example, answering, “What’s hypoxia?” or dispelling fears about being locked in a sci-fi space capsule – while the larger part will be the context for where it’s offered. An HBOT session may elicit crickets from a business traveler who just flew from Miami to New York (a relatively short haul) but may be especially enticing for someone who just completed a transatlantic crossing and has a big presentation the next day. Alternatively, good luck trying to sell this as a front desk upsell to the matriarch or patriarch of a young family who’s checking in with the family without also mentioning short-term daycare services. As with everything these days, the more you know about the guest, the more you can personalize the offer and boost conversions.

Such context and lensing of options also applies to IV (intravenous) or IM (intramuscular) drips that are becoming rather prevalent for fighting systemic inflammation induced by ionizing radiation or erratic sleep. The practitioner who administers these treatments can guide the guest through available options that can help with post-flight recovery – vitamin C, NAD and glutathione are three popular ones – but the guest first has to know the onsite (or on call) clinician exists and, crucially, feel compelled to head there right after arrival for this immediate wellness assistance rather than get settled in the room, chill by the pool or head out on the town.

Awareness on the website, via prearrival messaging and at the front desk are key, understanding that the latter of these three often means talking to guests who are in a slightly zombified state of mind and that simplicity is the name of the game. Think script guides for front desk clerks after noticing visible fatigue or an outright mention of a long haul about the availability of IV therapies as well as how actions taken in the narrow timeframe after landing will be the most effective at reversing the damage done.

Red-light therapy (RLT) and other forms of photobiomodulation (PBM) represent yet one more means of correcting air travel deficits in the immediate aftermath. Outside of the generic explanation that RLT stimulates mitochondria in the basal layers of the skin and can actually promote the synthesis of cutaneous melatonin, what’s most relevant about these treatments is that they are largely labor-independent. A practitioner sets a guest up in an RLT pod, in infrared sauna with RLT or hands over an RLT face mask, then the user is on their own for the allotted time. Several savvy luxury hotels have made RLT devices a brand standard as an in-room wellness amenity.

On the mobility front, massage certainly helps, and masseuses – or nowadays even a robo-massage – are likely to be more readily available on the supply-side and cost-effective front than onsite physiotherapists or isometric specialists who can methodically ameliorate joint instability issues or muscular disconnects that stem from too much sitting. If your hotel doesn’t have a spa or can’t scale from a labor perspective, foam rollers and cork massage balls in the room will have to suffice.

Another ‘lite’ version of this would be advising guests about on-demand yoga, stretching, light calisthenic or isometric routines accessible via the IPTV as well as the class schedule for yoga or (more advanced) animal flow in the movement studio downstairs. Any which way to inspire guests to introduce more mobility training into their lives will elicit benefits, although it should be advised that people with larger imbalances or chronic injuries are better off to work with a professional lest they do more harm than good.

All told, there are lots of options to successfully reframe existing wellness amenities for their ability to correct the unhealthy side effects of air travel or to sequence entirely new options both large and small. It starts with awareness for what the body actually endures when it’s up in the sky, then hitting all channels with contextual messaging. Safe travels!

Adam Mogelonsky
Hotel Mogel Consulting Limited

View source