opinion
As more and more luxury hotels are offering sleep-focused stays, Kate Spicer checks in for what she hopes will be more than 40 winks
There’s a spacious desk by Gordon Russell in the Sir Paul Smith Suite at Brown’s Hotel in Mayfair, walnut and reassuringly glossy and broad. I sit with my elbows supported by its solid presence, trying to isolate the source of a deliciously calm yet energised sensation across my entire body. That novel feeling is rest. The nine hours of the ‘dreamy, undisturbed sleep’ that is promised with Brown’s ‘Forte Winks’ package.
Luxury hotels promising a decent kip seem on first hearing to be ludicrous. Hotels are for sleeping in. What next, food dining? But sleep tourism, inevitably given the ugly portmanteau of ‘sleep-cations’, has become a rising trend over the past few years. Brown’s take on the sleep-tourism trend is to offer bed, breakfast, a silk eye mask by nightwear designer Yolke and a hibiscus night cream by Irene Forte Skincare (which also designed the facial exclusive to the package). There are other little touches: the turndown service includes a pot of fresh camomile-flower tea and a soothing This Works pillow spray. Irene Forte conceived Brown’s sleep escape to be ‘pretty relaxed’ in comparison with other offerings on the market. ‘It is designed to encourage a relaxing evening routine – which is crucial,’ Forte says. ‘There are so many sleep packages out there now. Some are intense.’
The Belmond Group’s Cadogan Hotel in Chelsea has a sleep concierge, recorded sleep meditations and a hypnotherapist for one-to-one sessions. London’s The Standard in King’s Cross has a handful of rooms that offer a level of sensory deprivation for people suffering from jet lag and night workers – like DJs – who have to sleep in the daytime. (This is also a canny repackaging of rooms in the building’s core that have no windows.) New York’s Park Hyatt has its scientistdesigned Bryte Restorative Sleep Suites, with all the persuasive aromatherapy and eye masks you’d expect, plus an AI-assisted bed that measures multiple biomarkers like body temperature, breathing patterns and heart rate, and adjusts accordingly. At downtown LA’s Figueroa Hotel, there’s a Rest and Recovery Suite with a whole menu of sleep-assisting extras including guided meditation, redlight therapy, a lamp that simulates sunrise… the list goes on.
As I lay down for my ‘Buona Notte’ (goodnight in Italian) facial in Brown’s small spa, I realised how much I regularly fight
