Sleep Tourism is a Trend at Luxury Hotels and Resorts

• Covid-19 wreaked havoc on sleep and the tourism industry alike.
• Many of us are sleep deprived, probably from the changes and stress brought on by the pandemic. A study in The Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine found that 40% of the over 2,500 adults in the study reported a reduction in their sleep quality since the start of the pandemic.
• Luxury hotels and resorts worldwide are luring guests with sleep-focused stays and experiences.

Here are some of the hotels and the experiences they offer (or offered) to create a sleep sanctuary, according to this article on CNN.

Park Hyatt New York
For about $1,000 a night, you can book their Bryte Restorative Sleep Suite. It’s a luxurious and spacious 900-square-foot suite. It features an adjustable bed and mattress that adjusts to relieve pressure points and control your sleep temperature. It also saves your preferences.

• Other sleep-enhancing amenities include:
• Vitruvi Essential Diffuser and signature “Sleep” Essential Oil blend
• Silk sleeping masks
• A collection of sleep-related books

Rosewood Hotels & Resorts (locations worldwide, ends in 2023)

Rooms at hotels around the world featured extra sleep-focused amenities and products for the Alchemy of Sleep. Guests could choose a 1-night ‘Dreamscape’ or a 2-5 night ‘Sleep Transformation.’ According to the press release, this was a limited-time experience offered in 2022.

Here are some of the offerings at different locations:

• Curated Sleep Boxes with essential oil blends, tea blends, aromatherapy linen mists, and silk eye masks.
• Meditation sessions
• A “Sleep Naturopathy” sleep consultation.
• Massages to enhance sleep
• Healing sound bath therapy.
• Meditation TV apps
• ‘Yogic Sleep,’ under the stars just before bedtime

Zedwell Hotel, London, England

Zedwell is an entire sleep-focused hotel in London. Rooms are soundproofed and are advertised as a hotel to “check in to tune out.” The rooms are designed to be quiet and simple to use. They designed each room or cocoon to remove stress.

• There are no TV or electronics in the room.
• Minimalist-designed rooms reduce visual noise.
• Soft ambient mood lighting.
• No complicated switches, TVs, or phones.
• Bathrooms feature a walk-in rain shower with simple, stress-free controls.
• Clutter and window-free experience that removes distractions from the outside world.

Hästens Sleep Spa Hotel, Portugal

This is a 15-room boutique hotel made by luxury Swedish bed manufacturer Hastens, located in Portugal. It has a very exclusive feeling and features Hästens products. Their pillows, duvets, and bed linen are made with natural goose feathers and contain no synthetic materials.

• Hästens pillow menu
• Hästens duvets
• Hästens bed linen
• Hästens bathrobe and slippers
• Blackout curtains

Mandarin Oriental, Geneva Switzerland

This one is truly unique and ideal if you have sleep concerns and want to travel to Switzerland. The 3-night package includes “an overnight polysomnographic test that records critical sleep parameters, such as body rhythms and movements, to help identify possible sleep disorders.”

Round-trip transfers to the CENAS sleep clinic

• One night in a VIP suite for a polysomnographic night test at CENAS for one person
• A full diagnosis and written report by a CENAS-accredited pneumologist
• CHF150 (approximately $166) daily dining credit
• Daily breakfast
• Access to Mandarin Oriental’s Wellness on the Road program
• Herbal tea amenity and pillow menu
• Complimentary use of the fitness center, sauna, and hammam (“A hammam is a public steam room, often offering massage and exfoliation, in which people can come together to relax and bathe. Hammams often contain a series of rooms employing dry and damp heat, showers, soaps, and salts.”)

I want to skip everything but the pillow menu and go straight to the sauna and hammam!! Throw in a sound bath and in-room massage before bed, and good night!

Mirage Las Vegas Stay Well Rooms

I’ve stayed at the Mirage Stay Well Room in Las Vegas several times. It’s more broadly focused on wellness, but that fits into sleep too. Here’s a room tour so you can see what amenities they offer. There’s more of a focus on clean air (no smoking) and self-care.

It would be a dream to stay in any of these hotels! However, the price point of $1,000 a night or higher. It may be out of reach for most. Still, there are things hotels could do besides offer an iron and a bathrobe.

Hotel Figueroa, Los Angeles, California

The hotel features a Rest & Recovery Suite. The focus is on sleep tech. Two to three weeks before your stay, the hotel will send you a pillow quiz from Pluto Pillow, a woman-owned company that custom-crafts pillows according to body stats and sleep preferences. They’ll have your pillow selection ready for you when you get there.

You’ll sleep on a customizable mattress from Eight Sleep that learns your sleep patterns and adjusts the temperature based on your biometrics throughout the night. It’s dual-zoned, too, so you can sleep at the temperature and conditions you choose, apart from whoever shares a bed with you.

They also have in-room workouts with the personal strength fitness mirror, FORME.

Castle Hot Springs, Arizona

If you’re like me, you love staying where there are natural hot springs. Just outside of Phoenix, these geothermal hot springs are naturally forged over 13,000 years ago. How do mineral hot springs help with sleep? Research suggests a warm bath or shower an hour or two before bedtime can help you unwind and fall asleep faster. It does this by lowering your core temperature. That’s a circadian sleep signal that’s present in mammals. Your body warms and then drops the temperature, and that’s a signal for our bodies to prepare for sleep.

Hot springs also include magnesium helps with blood circulation and relaxation. “The unique water is particularly rich in lithium, magnesium, and bicarbonates, which help lift your mood, calm your mind, and ease aching joints and muscles.”

Speaking of temperature, you can choose from one pool with a temperature of 106F, another about 96F, and the other 86F. The resort also has many types of yoga classes, Qigong, hiking, bike tours, and more (exercise also helps prepare your body for sleep).

There are more sleep tourism hotels on this list.

Why don’t more hotels offer sleep amenities?

Ear plugs and sleep masks should be offered as part of the room rate or as a sleep upgrade to any room. Also, being able to request or rent a sound machine to drown out snoring or other noise at night would also be amazing. Vacations aren’t the same if you can’t sleep because of noise in the hall, outside or in your room.

Here are the 3 factors I think are most important to get better sleep while traveling.

1. Sound is important to calm the mind and prepare for sleep. That’s why meditation is so important. A few years ago, I went to the Las Vegas Market and tried a demo bed at the Reverie booth. There were speakers on the headboard, which you could only hear in the space around you. So even the person next to you couldn’t hear what was being played. It was so immersive. I can’t find more details, and unfortunately, I made a video about it, but my phone died during that trip, and I lost all the footage.

But I hope to see more mattresses or foundations with sound and/or movement to create an immersive experience. It’s very relaxing and helps tune out everything else that impedes sleep, including your thoughts. It gets you from thinking to experiencing.

2. Temperature is also important to sleep. Being too hot is the biggest issue, with the optimal sleep temperature being between 60 and 67° F.

3. Light is another sleep factor. Limiting light from electronics, windows, and rooms before sleep and in the morning is vital. For that reason, I never travel without a sleep mask.

I’ve found that something like the Headspace app helps turn that switch for me. I didn’t even notice I fell asleep until the next morning (and my phone’s drained battery). I’d love something like that playing instead of an app. TVs sometimes have those programs, but the light emitted from the TV isn’t conducive to sleep.

To me, the best vacation for sleep is a CRUISE. The lack of internet, pitch-black ocean surroundings along with the gentle rocking from the waves induce sleep. A cruise removes the stress of planning where to go or what to eat. So there’s plenty of time for relaxation.

Which resort or hotel would you like to stay at from this list? Let me know in the comments.