Travelers Not Getting Enough Shut Eye

By Author: Steve Robinson
Total Articles: 468
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Many have found that it is easier to identify cheap travel options, such as cheap airplane tickets, discount hotel rooms, and cheap vacation packages than it is to get a good night’s sleep while on the road.

People tend to often feel wired and tired while traveling. Experts contend that America has become a nation of walking zombies that does not properly value sleep.

Around 66 percent of Americans do not get enough sleep during the week according to a recent national Sleep Foundation poll. Most respondents said that they need 7.5 hours a night to feel their best. The study found that blinking lights from various electronic devices make sleeping all the more difficult.

In response hotels in large and small cities alike are dimming lights, removing digital clocks from rooms, hiring sleep concierges, offering meditation, pillow menus, and relaxation massages. Some guests are even being hooking up to an intravenous infusion.

The Benjamin hotel in Manhattan recently hired a sleep consultant to oversee its sleep program, train staff in sleep care, and consult guests. The hotel has removed digital ...
... clocks from rooms, and offers pillows named “Swedish Memory” and encourages jet lagged guests to power nap.

Guests are offered an aromatherapy and massage based “Restorative Sleep Ritual” and the “Sacred Sleep/Healing Dreams” meditation at the Joya Spa in the Montelucia Resort & Spa in Scottsdale, Arizona. This hotel has found that many of its guests are stressed and not getting enough sleep. Its aim is to help their guests relax on a deeper level.

Guests can opt for an intravenous therapy of vitamins and antioxidants, including vitamin B, which is supposed to be help induce better sleep. The theory is that by providing the body with adequate nutrients to support the body’s normal physiological function, balance can be restored which in turn contributes to higher quality sleep.

Medical professions warn that sleep has become a commercial issue and that sleep remedies offered by hotels and others do not always benefit the recipient. Sleep medicine is a relatively new accredited specialty, having grown out of advances in research since the discovery of rapid eye movement during sleep in 1953.

While there tends to be disagreement over which sleep tactics are most effective, sleep tends to depend on a person’s state of mind. If a guest goes to a spa and is convinced that aromatherapy helps induce sleep, that person may well sleep better afterwards.

The late 1990s witnessed “bed wars” during which many hotels upgraded their bedding in response to Starwood’s Westin Hotels roll out of its Heavenly beds. Today the focus on improved sleep ambience has shifted to factors such as lighting and air quality.
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