$1,780 to spend the night in a ‘cocoon’? Hotels are now betting on sleep tourism | News – Business standard

By Liam On Mar 6, 2024

By Carla Sosenko

To sleep, maybe to dream. Or, if not dreaming, to at least feel vaguely rested the next day, especially on vacation. Is that too much to ask?

In the catering world that is a business opportunity. Hilton’s 2024 Trend Report shows that the main reason people are currently traveling is to rest and recharge.

“Hotels locked in a deathmatch with Airbnb have begun exploring ways they can compete by offering services and amenities around the primary purpose of a hotel stay: a good night’s sleep,” said Chekitan Dev, a professor at Cornell University Nolan School. of Hotel Administration.

Now, he said, a good night’s sleep isn’t just a selling point for hotels; it is a ‘fast growing industry’.

From AI-enabled beds to on-call hypnotherapists, today’s sleep tourism is essentially an old dog with new tricks. “This is about the seventh or eighth time this has come up as a topic” since the mid-1980s, said Bjorn Hanson, a professor at New York University’s Jonathan M Tisch Center of Hospitality.

Today, hotels are going far beyond these basics to capture the business of sleep seekers. This is what some do.

Smart beds and smart glasses

Like the Westin Heavenly Bed, Bryte wants to be the next hotel mattress disruptor. The $6,299 AI-assisted, smartphone-connectable mattress is the only bed with an active pressure relief system that adjusts as you move to optimize sleep, according to Bryte CEO Luke Kelly.

The Park Hyatt New York currently has five Bryte Sleep Suites (from $1,095), which were added after the hotel reopened following a 376-day Covid closure. The Park Hyatt Chicago has the similar Mindfulness Suite with Bryte Bed ($645), as do a handful of rooms and suites at hotels

With the Sleep Wellness Package at Beatrice in Providence (from $419 per night), you’ll have to make do with a Serta Perfect Sleeper, but you’ll have access to Therabody SmartGoggles, an eye mask that uses heat and vibration to reduce sleep. your heart rate and relieve facial tension. The package also includes a mocktail at the rooftop bar (alcohol is an enemy of a good night’s sleep) and herbal tea.

Retreats and other programs

The Carillon’s spa has a five-treatment sleep circuit ($99 per treatment) that uses infrared light, electromagnetic frequencies, salt floats and vibrations, among other things. The resort’s new four-night Sleep Well Retreat ($2,598) includes all of the above, plus a sleep-boosting massage.

‘Cocooning’

Relaxing the mind is common, but the way each trait tries to achieve it varies. A visitor to the Park Hyatt said the bedrooms form a “cocoon” away from the living space, meaning you can close off the sleeping area and make it dark and cozy; Britain’s Zedwell hotels feature small, dimly lit ‘cocoons’ (from around $142, per person) with virtually no distractions from window to wall: no TVs, no telephones and basically no windows, which of a certain kind poor sleeper could cause more anxiety, not less.

Tempo by Hilton offers rooms divided into three zones, including “an enveloping sleep environment” with a Sealy Accelerate temperature-controlled mattress and sound-absorbing acoustics; lights that dim at sunset; and, in some rooms, Peloton bikes, for people considering exercising their Ambien.

This month, in conjunction with the NSF’s Sleep Awareness Week (March 10 to 16), the Mandarin Oriental will partner with hypnotherapist Malminder Gill, aka the Sleep Concierge, at London’s Hyde Park Building. (After Hyde Park, the service will be available at the Mandarin Oriental in Mayfair, opening this spring, followed by pop-ups across Europe, New York and other destinations later this year.) From £500, guests can join Ms. Gill at the spa for a sleep consultation and session tailored to their specific sleep concerns, with Ms Gill even recommending optimal meal times and order of food intake. There will also be an option for a private bedside session, where, if all goes well, guests will fall asleep.

“I’m walking on my toes,” Mrs. Gill said.

The Royal Sonesta Benjamin New York has a similar program called Rest & Renew, run by Rebecca Robbins, co-author of Sleep for Success! Everything you need to know about sleep but are too tired to ask.

And Hyatt hotels in New Zealand and Australia now feature the Sleep at Hyatt program, with Nancy H. Rothstein, aka the Sleep Ambassador, as its guru. For $49.50, guests can add a sleep ritual package (bath salts, eye mask, tea, pulse-point aromatherapy roll-on); for $190 they can buy a pair of Dreamers glasses, blue- and green-light glasses that filter out the melatonin-disrupting rays that come from screens if you’re a nighttime scroller. Of course, that could mean falling asleep with a few specs, which for a chronic tosser-and-turner could be counterproductive.

The experts’ point of view

What sticks and what doesn’t in this round of sleep tourism remains to be seen. Joseph M. Dzierzewski, vice president for research and scientific affairs at the National Sleep Foundation, wonders why, for example, special sleep amenities aren’t standard in every room.

“The hotel must provide an environment where people can sleep,” he said. Isn’t that the whole point of a hotel? Furthermore, “you have to look at sleep from a 24-hour time frame.” As important as it is to sleep in a dark room, he said, you also need exposure to bright morning light. “Many people forget how important the day is to the night.”

Dr. Jing Wang, medical director of the Mount Sinai Integrative Sleep Center, thinks the puzzle of better sleep for most people can be solved if they discover what’s causing their problems, whether it’s sleep apnea or psychological issues. Getting trained at a fancy resort instead of a hospital sleep lab may sound fun, but the key, she said, is follow-up and follow-up. Without them there is little chance of lasting change.

“If you go through the list of our sleep hygiene recommendations – quiet, dark, relax your mind, don’t think about the things that bother you during the day – I can easily say,” said Dr. Cheek. But doing these things can be difficult for many people. In that way, sleep tourism makes sense because it allows you to “get out of your normal environment and into an environment that does include some of these healthy sleep routines,” said Dr. Cheek.

Similarly, Mr. Dzierzewski points to a common condition — getting stuck in a bad sleep rut — that a short, snooze-oriented hotel stay could remedy. “Maybe you just need a hard reset if you’re stuck in an endless spiral. Bad sleep begets bad sleep, bad sleep,” he said. “If you can break that cycle, maybe lasting positive change can happen. But without additional information about how you got into that cycle in the first place, I wonder if you’ll benefit from it in the long run.”

What none of these hotels, mattresses or retreats can do is permanently remove smartphones, crying children, mental to-do lists, existential anxiety and other common sleep thieves from your bed.

And of course, not everyone can afford $500 or more to get a good night’s sleep.