Sleep Better When You Travel

Whether for business or pleasure traveling can be exhausting, especially when crossing time zones. Thankfully, hotels around the world understand this and are increasingly creating specialized sleep programs and amenities to help guests sleep better. As sleep and health become synonymous in the minds of travelers, innovative techniques, tools, programs and experts are being employed at hotels in the United States and around the world at a growing rate.

Westin Hotels celebrated the 15^th anniversary of their Heavenly Bed by providing guests with a wearable sleep sensor. The Up Sleep Monitor wearable sensor features a silent alarm along with internal sleep pattern tracking and virtual coaching. The monitors are augmented by access to a personal sleep coach during the guest’s stay.

The Colorado Park Hyatt Beaver Creek Resort and Spa has a sleep channel that plays specialized sleep-inducing music as well as options for slumber massages and/or oxygen canisters to adjust to the altitude. The hotel’s restaurant menu features sleep-oriented drinks such as their after-dinner “sleep elixir” with chamomile and apple cider, and a dessert of banana oatmeal cookies are advertised as containing ingredients that help guests to sleep. VIP guest rooms are outfitted with slumber kits that include an eye mask, earplugs and a CD of ambient music. Special glasses can even be provided that work to block out the blue light emitted by electronics, which has been proven to disrupt natural sleep cycles.

In New York, The Bryant Park Hotel offers a sleep mask, earplugs and a sound machine with nature sounds at turndown. 70 Park Avenue offers guests melatonin chocolates. At The Benjamin, guests can select a pillow from a menu that includes pillows filled with buckwheat or satin, with names like Swedish Memory and Lullaby, as well as set bedtime reminder calls.

Crowne Plaza unveiled a new headboard that helps cut ambient noise by 30 percent, and London’s Crowne Plaza St. James offers a specially developed Sleep Advantage program with aromatherapy products and printed advice from a sleep expert. Berlin’s Swissotel’s sleep package features a combination of light therapy, power napping, mountain-air breathing, aroma therapy, special nutritional supplements and better sleep through a sound pillow. They even go so far as to offer polysomnography upon request.

Even Las Vegas as become a great place to get some rest (if you choose to do so). The MGM Grand features a Stay Well Dawn Simulator, which gradually wakes you up with cortisol-producing shades of blue light. Their organic-cotton mattress builds in extra posture support to eliminate tossing and turning.