Does anyone here remember when travel was glamorous? Seriously, raise your hand. And I'm not harkening back to the era of the Titanic, when the Astors and Guggenheims went down with the ship and the finely appointed china. I'm referring to the not so distant past, when people actually got dressed up to get on an airplane and staying at a hotel carried an air of exotic mystery.

Bell Service. Room service. Turn Down Service. Alluring elements of the traditional hotel stay, none of them featuring even a whiff of the home front.

Yet, when you step on an airplane these days, you are less likely to get slacks and a dress shirt than a whiff of bare feet and the swoosh of mesh gym shorts; likewise, when you settle into your hotel room, the feel is less escape and more....homey? It turns out that hotels have largely bought into the notion that they can attract more guests by making them feel like they never left home.

The first shot fired across the bow in this trend? After however many hundreds of years of the lodging industry's existence - from rooms above a tavern to five-star resorts - someone finally got the bright ...