High cleaning standards, a fantastic bed and good customer service. It really doesn’t take much to please me as a hotel guest.

I bet you’re the same. It’s no surprise, then, that any hotel that can excel at these three components consistently will outperform most of the market.
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Whether the demographic is tourists or business travellers, the core value a hotel offers is one simple thing: a great night’s sleep. Instead of making sure guests have the best damn sleep of their life, many hotels opt to simply add more technology and gimmicks to their rooms. What a waste!

Away from hospitality, sleep is forecast to be one of the hottest wellness trends this decade. Just look at the Google Trends data from the US:
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Hotels are the biggest players in the global sleep business, yet almost nobody in hospitality is talking about it. I’ve been surprised by the industry’s widespread oversight on this, because the opportunities are lucrative.

People’s fascination with sleep is only growing. As the graph above shows, the number of Google keyword searches for sleep has risen over the past 15 years.

The same data shows that more than twice the number of people search for “sleep app” than “meditation app” too.

People want to optimise their sleep. They want to sleep better, longer, deeper, and in ways they haven’t even thought about. Who can blame them? Research shows that bad sleep can contribute to Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity and poor mental health.

🛏️ Is sleep having a 21st-century renaissance?

When online mattress brands like Casper and Simba emerged five years ago, they kickstarted a new era of sleep industry innovation. Today, there are more than 175 online mattress companies. But it doesn’t stop there.

Innovative products are entering the market every day. Sleep sensors, robots, headphones, white noise machines, body temperature regulators, weighted blankets, melatonin tea and CBD/CBN oils are just some of the popular sleep solutions gaining traction.

🏨 Some hotels are ahead of the sleeping trend.

The newly-opened Equinox Hotel in New York focuses heavily on sleep in their room design and even offers a sleep coaching service for its guests.

Elsewhere in the Big Apple, The Benjamin Hotel has a curated “top 10” menu of pillows, a 24/7 sleep team and a lullaby music library.

Sleeping packages like these examples can be the perfect upsell for guests or even be a premium room category of their own. And that’s without having to find even a centimetre of additional space.
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😴 Need an easy win? Integrate sleep care in other parts of your offering.

The foundation for a good night’s sleep goes beyond the bedroom — food and drink also have an enormous effect on the quality of your rest. So, why not adapt your beverage menu to offer teas or cocktails that promote good sleep?

Partnering with beauty and wellness brands to add new revenue streams based on sleep is another interesting strategy.

The English brand Anatome offers beautiful apothecare with different vitamins, minerals and oils, and actively collaborates with hotels. Their concept stores have appeared in Soho House locations, offering visitors the chance to purchase different botanicals.
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🎧 Get up to speed on sleep!

Why not improve your own knowledge about sleep? This podcast series is a crash course in three parts.

It was made by Matthew Walker, one of the world’s leading physicians and author of the international bestselling book “Why We Sleep” (which we also recommend).

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This is post was written by David Kijlstra. David is the owner of the hotel agency Highest Season, which helps hotels and serviced apartments to increase profitability by crafting new commercial strategies, introducing new business lines and implementing distribution strategies.