Gone are the days when hoteliers could tout rental-free cellphones, personalized in-residence cards and high-speed Internet connections as cutting-edge, stand-out amenities. Fierce competition for high-end travellers, combined with a trend toward opulent boutique hotels that indulge guests like latter-day sultans, has compelled executive-class hostelries to offer innovative, eye-popping services just to stay on the map.

That's why today's business travellers can have dinner cooked in their suite by a four-star restaurant's sous-chef, follow that up with a workout at their in-room gym, and then choose from a menu of pillows--buckwheat, magnetized or gel--on which to lay their weary heads.

Heck, not just the body but the soul is up for special pampering these days: Feel guilty for pulling a fast one on your partner? At the Four Seasons Resort Bali at Jimbaran Bay, you can even have your karma cleansed. So sit back, relax and soak up our whirlwind tour of some of the coolest new amenities in the world of travel.

TECHNOLOGY TREATS
Most self-respecting business hotels already offer in-room computer hookups, dedicated fax numbers and TV/VCR/DVD playlands. Now cutting-edge properties are putting the high-tech bells and whistles at poolside, in the streets, even in the loo.

The Berkeley Hotel in London, England, has assembled key office equipment, including a computer with Internet access and DVD, onto a mobile workstation--a rolling cart that can be moved to bedside, to a colleague's quarters, even to the swimming pool. Even better, The Regent Bangkok has put its business centre on the road. Who hasn't sat fuming, mired in traffic, mentally ticking off a list of E-mails and faxes that should be flying over the lines? The Regent's so-called business-centre-on-wheels is a Chevy van outfitted with TV, VCR, computer, fax and phone that lets you work even in the midst of Bangkok's world-class traffic jams.

New York City's RIHGA Royal Hotel, meanwhile, is placing high-tech amenities in the hands of guests' families and colleagues back home. Stay in a Pinnacle Suite at the RIHGA Royal for 15 nights a year and the hotel will give you a mate to its Via TV videophone so that you can say goodnight to the kids--or get castigated by the boss--face to face.

And high tech isn't all about cutting deals. For executives who enjoy being in the hot seat, the hotel's bathrooms have electronically heated toilets that turn into computerized bidets. A control panel at bowlside can be programmed to meet individual preferences. Advisory: Refrain from actually pressing the buttons when stooping to read the instructions, unless you're keen to have your face washed. And vying for a spot in the high-tech bathroom competition, The Peninsula New York has put three phones in the loo in its fanciest rooms: one by the sink, one by the toilet and a hands-free speaker phone alongside the tub. Who needs to soak away their troubles when they could be getting some work done?

Other hotels have made telephone advances outside the washroom. For the E-mail-dependent, The Ritz-Carlton in Cancun has installed a You've Got Mail booth near the hotel's meeting area, so guests can check messages without returning to their rooms. Ritz-Carltons also minister to the technophobe with the chain's Technology Butlers. On call 24 hours a day--because computers always seem most recalcitrant in the wee hours--this rescue squad will bail you out of any techno-morass, whether it involves Internet and E-mail problems, cellphone dilemmas, pager and Palm-calendar glitches, or problems using the in-room fax.

For its part, the newly opened Fairmont Vancouver Airport is the first hotel in Canada to install the INNCOME technology system, which communicates information about every square centimetre of the property to a centralized "brain." If a bulb burns out, a message goes to maintenance. And when a guest leaves the room, lights and air conditioning shut down to save energy. Original settings are automatically restored as soon as someone returns. Housekeeping at the Fairmont is also wired: Maids' key cards read motion sensors, just outside room doors, to let them know if you're in, even when you haven't turned on the "Do Not Disturb" sign. A little too close to 1984? Rest assured: The sensors--not to be confused with the censors--can't discern the exact nature of guest's activity.

And you can sign into your room at the Fairmont even before you've left the airport's baggage claim. Satellite check-in counters in the airport's arrivals halls dispense room keys, and hotel bell-people fetch luggage as soon as it spews onto the carousel. When it's time to depart, Air Canada and Canadian Airlines passengers staying on the hotel's Entrée Gold floors can complete preflight formalities from their rooms: Airline reps deliver boarding passes and pick up your luggage for check-in.

Airlines, too, are sweetening the techno-treats. The 14-inch in-flight video screens at each of Singapore Airlines' first-class seats are the largest in the air. And Japan Airlines' first class now offers the Eye-Trek system--glasses that convey the sensation of watching movies on a 62-inch screen.

On All Nippon Airways' upper deck, first- and business-class passengers might be forgiven for feeling as if they've never left the office--what with a business centre that includes telephones, a fax machine, data ports, electric outlets, two desks and high-back swivel chairs--with seat belts, of course.

FOOD OF THE GODS
After work, All Nippon business-class passengers can visit the local self-serve bar, a three-seat counter on the main deck. All Nippon not only claims to mix the perfect martini, it also attempts to steam the perfect bowl of rice, with cookers designed to take account of in-flight atmospheric conditions.

Speaking of perfection, the Heartbeat restaurant at The W New York Hotel prides itself on serving the ultimate cup of tea. With alcohol consumption down in recent years, high-level meetings in New York and L.A. are being held over what's coming to be known as "power tea." Heartbeat has even hired one of the world's few tea sommeliers, James Labe, to advise on which brews go well with chocolate desserts (an assertive Japanese green) or which to pair with sorbet or fruit (a delicate Chinese green, like Silver Needle, will do nicely, thank you).

For those who prefer their beverages distilled, Loews Miami Beach Hotel doesn't just send the drinks; it dispatches the bartender. A martini mixologist will arrive in your room to whip up a batch of SoBe (short for South Beach, darling) martinis and present them on a silver tray. The Trump International Hotel & Tower in New York goes one better: A sous-chef from its five-star restaurant, Jean Georges, will prepare any dish from the menu--marble of foie gras salad or lamb loin dusted with black trumpet mushrooms--in your suite's private kitchen.

New York's RIHGA Royal Hotel, meanwhile, reverses the procedure, by putting your dining table in the restaurant's kitchen. Table One A is located in the middle of the culinary action at the RIHGA Halcyon restaurant. That close to the food, who needs a menu? After chatting with guests, chefs simply bring out five courses they think will appeal.

STRESS SOLUTIONS
If you find it hard to get to the workout centre--and command an expense account that allows $985 (U.S.) a night plus tax--you can always rent the gym suite at New York's Lowell hotel. Assembled for Madonna upon her breakup with Sean Penn, this 85-square-metre space holds a StairMaster, a stationary bike, a ballet bar, Nautilus machines and free weights, as well as a stereo, remote-control TV and phones on either side of the treadmill. For the rest of us, Hilton has installed Health-Fit Rooms at nine of its U.S. hotels, including those in New York, Washington, Chicago, San Francisco and Atlanta. Each room stocks Reebok CyclePlus machines with three cardiovascular exercise modes, SPRI Xertube resistance tubing and a 20-minute in-room workout outlined in the welcome guide--all for the price of a standard room.

Hate to work out alone? Houston's St. Regis hotel has the answer: a personal jogging companion. On request, staff members, some with more than a few marathons under their belts, will team up with guests for a healthy, scenic run. The hotel is willing to ferry joggers to trails at the city's Memorial Park, and greets their return with fresh fruit, chilled water and a towel, all free of charge.

Or perhaps your stress comes from rushing to pack for that business trip--and leaving one can't-do-without item back home. Before you press the panic button or start dialling FedEx, check the minibar. Hotels are now filling them with the most useful items. Can't appear at a stockholders' meeting in sweat socks? Atlanta's Ritz-Carlton minibars supply black hose. All dressed up in scuba gear without an underwater camera? Check the minibar at the Bora Bora Lagoon Resort. Ready for love, but...oops? The minibar at San Francisco's Clift Hotel comes stocked with an "intimacy kit," complete with a selection of condoms and lubricating gel.

Or, if you're a total failure at packing, you might want to stay at a Loews hotel. Each one stocks a closet with such oft-forgotten items as a cummerbund and bow tie for partygoers, and workout clothes and Walkmans for jocks. For the convention crowd, there are PCs, printer cables and even a karaoke machine--for when the drinks really start flowing.

TO SLEEP, PERCHANCE?
If all that jogging and crooning hasn't left you nodding off, check into one of Hilton's Sleep-Tight or Stress-Less rooms. Sleep-Tights come with an Apollo Light Box to help realign the body's circadian rhythms, a BioBrite Sunrise Clock that awakens guests with a "simulated sunrise," and white-noise machines. Stress-Less rooms have a Relaxor Calming Pool and a variety of "innovative tools" for self-massage. Among them: the Bio-Magnetic Corp.'s Pulse Magnetic Belt and the Relaxor Massaging Seat Topper (a seat pad that rests on the back and seat of a chair and massages the back while applying heat to the lumbar area).

When the general manager of San Francisco's Pan Pacific hotel noticed a number of guests arriving with their own pillows, he sensed there was room for improvement in the slumber department. His solution: a fluffing machine that stuffs feather pillows to guests' specifications. The Benjamin in New York doesn't stop at feathers--the 11 choices on its pillow menu include gel-filled (for relieving neck pain), buckwheat (for maximum support), jelly neckroll (with a core that can be heated or chilled), the NASA-designed Swedish memory (which reacts to body temperature) and a magnetic therapy pillow (it purports to reduce swelling and relieve insomnia and fatigue). Whatever gets you through the night.

And what's worse than tossing and turning on a plane? British Airways nudges first-class passengers to dreamland by including an aromatherapy sleep-enhancer of rosewater and lavender oil in its amenity kits--which also include a foot spray of sage water and myrtle oil, said to shrink altitude-induced puffy ankles.

But you'll probably get the best airborne rest in Singapore Airlines' First Class SkySuites, compartments furnished with burl wood and leather, with the ambiance of a 1920s luxury train. Don your Givenchy sleep suit, pull up the duvet, adjust the 6-foot-4-inch seat to its 127-degree "cradle" position, and you may start wishing the transpacific flight was even longer.

Even better sleep, though, is on the horizon: Next year, Virgin Atlantic Airways will provide what some see as one step in the direction of an officially sanctioned chapter of the Mile High Club: twin seats that turn into double beds. Its planes will also have spa-like private beauty areas and bigger bars. We'll drink to that.

ABOVE AND (WAY) BEYOND
Fine hotels pride themselves on anticipating their guests' every need, even the desire for companionship. Visitors to The Observatory Hotel in Sydney, Australia, can fraternize with two well-bred goldfish, Basil and Sybil, named for the proprietors of Fawlty Towers. Unlike their namesakes, these fish are excellent listeners and don't talk back. Indeed, gilled roommates seem to be the surrogate pet of choice around the world. At the Hotel Monaco in Seattle, your aquatic buddy arrives complete with name tag. The goldfish at New York's trendy SoHo Grand Hotel are as stylish as the hotel itself: either black moors (conforming to the downtown dress code) or calico ryukins (spotted in an abstract-art sort of way). The Pan Pacific Bangkok, meanwhile, allows repeat guests to adopt a blue-red-and-green Siamese fighting fish.

And while on the subject of varying hues: New York's recently opened The Time hotel was conceived around the concept of colour. Designer Adam Tihany believes that mood is highly influenced by what you see around you. At The Time, each room embraces a primary colour, which guests experience through sight, taste and smell: Red rooms, for example, contain a bowl of strawberries or other red berries and a red-inspired scent--spicy, ripening kumquat fused with basil and rosewood.

The nearby AWAY Spa.Gym at The W in New York takes colour coding a step further. Their Aura Photo Imaging Analysis claims to provide perspective on your emotions and well-being. And once your problems are pinpointed, how are they solved? Why, with a hydrotherapy wellness bath, its colour chosen to enhance the strengths and tackle the weaknesses discovered by the Imaging Analysis.

Some guests, however, have problems that even the right colour bath or a visit from a friendly goldfish can't cure. For those on the brink of divorce, New York's extended-stay Envoy Club offers its Suddenly Single package, which includes a referral list of lawyers, psychotherapists and psychics--plus an aromatherapy candle, soothing infusions, a book called The New Creative Divorce and a nighttime sound machine.

Or perhaps you'd like advice on dealing with (a) stars or (b) royalty. The Hyatt Regency Maui Resort & Spa employs an astronomy pro to interpret the view from its powerful telescopes. London's Dorchester, meanwhile, has engaged a full-time protocol officer, Alan Hancock, whose 16 years at Buckingham Palace inform his advice on such matters as how to address English aristocracy and various foreign heads of state.

Most hotels have physicians on call 24 hours a day. Only the Jalousie Hilton Resort & Spa St. Lucia, however, offers a consultation with a bush doctor. Menziel, as he is known locally, dispenses holistic healing with natural ingredients gathered from his garden and the rain forest: boiled japanah and pea leaves to cure the common cold, a tea of tichimai and salt to blunt a headache, and boiled soursop leaves to induce sleep.

Of course, what good's a robust body without a healthy soul? Bali's Four Seasons Jimbaran Bay can help rid you of that nagging spiritual malaise with the melukat, a Hindu karma-cleansing ceremony. On full-moon nights on a black-sand beach near the Tanah Lot Temple, sarong-clad devotees--that means you--are immersed in the sea, anointed with holy water and led in an incense-imbued ceremony that's sealed with three sips of holy water. When a white thread is tied around the wrist and participants are crowned with a headband of blossoms and grass, they should, by tradition, be pure as a babe once more.

Now clear of conscience, your anima is free for romance. In New Orleans, the International House invokes a tie of a more romantic sort--a voodoo courtship. To call forth Rada, the spirit of love, the hotel provides a woven spell basket filled with powerful relics: orrisroot to place under the tongue when kissing, candles, a feather, frankincense and grigri--a lucky charm. Instructions for the ritual joining are tucked into the basket so do-it-yourselfers can slip off to a secretive place in the French Quarter to bond on their own.

But that's voodoo-lite. To go the whole nine yards, hire a local Matriarch of Mambo to create a personal altar in your room and perform the voodoo ceremony of a lifetime. Then bring on the toughest client--you'll be more than prepared.