NEW YORK – 63 percent of travelers say that a good night's sleep is the most important service a hotel can provide according to "Sleeping on the Road." A Sleep Study by Westin Hotels & Resorts. Sleep is so important that more than twice as many travelers said they'd take a great night's sleep over great sex.

So are hotels meeting the demands of their weary guests? Not always, say the 600 frequent travelers surveyed for Westin by Guideline Research and Consulting Corporation of New York City, a national market research and public opinion polling firm.* To wit:

  • Travelers say they get less sleep on the road as compared with home (49%); sleep fewer hours (51%); and are more likely to wake up in the middle of the night in a hotel bed (31%).
  • The quality of sleep travelers receive on the road is worse (50%) and 31% claim their performance on the road has suffered because of a bad night's sleep in a hotel room.
  • Three-quarters of the executives surveyed said they're tired when they return home from a business trip and need to catch up on their sleep.
  • On average, it takes a traveler 24 minutes to fall asleep in a hotel room compared to 15 minutes at home.

"Hotels are in the business of selling sleep, but more than half of our customers don't sleep well and most of them go home tired – not a great report card for the hotel industry," said Barry Sternlicht, Chairman and CEO of Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc., Westin's parent. "But it's really no surprise. After all, a good bed is one of the most important components to a good night's sleep, and hotels have been neglecting their beds for years."

Well, no longer. Today Westin announced that it is putting 52,000 new beds in its 39,500 guestrooms in 83 hotels in North America – a $30 million investment. Called The Heavenly Bed, Westin's new bed is a departure from your typical hotel bed. Sumptuous, stylish and plush, the all-white Heavenly Bed consists of a custom designed Simmons Beautyrest(R) pillowtop mattress set; a cozy down blanket; three crisp sheets ranging in thread count from 180-250; a comforter; a duvet; and five of the best pillows in the business.

Hotel Beds

And Westin's research supports the need for better hotel beds. For instance:

  • Most business travelers (82%) dislike something about hotel beds as compared with their beds at home. These criticisms center around the mattress being too soft (27%) or too hard (21%) as well as there not being enough pillows (16%).
  • By far, travelers said that a comfortable bed is the most important item in a hotel room (49%). All other hotel room items – including a fax, a good shower, the TV, a large desk and a minibar – were mentioned by less than 10% of the travelers.
  • The bed is seen as sort of a "mission control center" in hotel rooms.On average, travelers spend more than half their time in the hotel room in the bed itself (56%). When asked what activities they perform in hotel beds, travelers said sleep (81%); watch TV (55%); read (44%); or make phone calls (42%) and more than one in three (36%) do work in bed.
  • Almost all the travelers surveyed (84%) said that a luxurious bed would make a hotel room more attractive to them.
Men Miss Their Spouse While Women Miss Their Bed

Sleeping well on the road is more elusive for women than men. And when women business travelers are tossing and turning in their hotel bed, they're more likely to miss their own bed than the man they've left behind:

  • 54% of women take more time to fall asleep in a hotel than at home vs. 35% of men.
  • 59% of women say the quality of sleep in a hotel is worse than at home vs. 47% of men.
  • And women are much more likely to return home from a business trip tired (82%) than men (70%).
  • When asked what they miss most about sleeping at home when they are sleeping in a hotel, 43% of men will say their spouse/significant other compared to only 22% of women who say they miss their spouse or significant other.
  • So what do women miss most when they're sleeping on the road? Their own bed (37% vs. 22% of men).
  • And while 66% of men say they'd like to bring their spouse or significant other along on a business trip, only 52% of women said the same.
  • Women more than men say a luxury bed makes a hotel room more attractive (93% of women vs. 81% of men.)
  • When it comes to wardrobe in the boudoir, women are much more buttoned up than men. While 11% of men sleep in the nude or their underwear (42%), only 2% of women shed it all in bed or strip to their skivvies (3%).

C-Span vs. Adult Entertainment? What Keeps Travelers Up and What Puts Them to Sleep on the Road

  • When asked what keeps them up at night, 73% of the travelers surveyed say they miss their spouse or significant other and 59% say they worry about what is going on back at the office.
  • Nearly all the travelers surveyed miss something about sleeping at home. 37% say they miss their spouse or significant other while more than a quarter (26%) say they miss their own bed.
  • Most travelers (51%) would rather sleep in a hotel bed than in a bed at their mother-in-laws house (12%).
  • One in three travelers (33%) say they've had an alcoholic beverage to help them fall asleep on the road.
  • Travelers do many different things to fall asleep in a hotel room including read (53%); call their family (47%); draw the curtains or shut the blinds (43%) or leave the TV on (42%).
  • If they wake up in the middle of the night, travelers are most likely to watch TV (30%) or read (23%) to help them fall back asleep.
  • Executives who watch TV in their hotel beds are a pretty serious lot with CNN (79%), national network news (59%) and local network news (51%) being their top tube picks.
  • Perhaps because they depend on TV to put them to sleep, travelers are more likely to watch thunderstorms and filibusters than adult movies in their hotel bed. 42% of travelers say they watch The Weather Channel in their hotel room, while 17% surf to C-Span and only 11% admit to watching adult movies.
  • Who tucks business travelers in at night? Most travelers say the lastvoice they hear before going to sleep in a hotel room is their spouse or significant other (46%). On a less romantic note, 18% of travelers say goodnight to the wake-up service operator and 6% to the hotel operator.

Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc., through its St. Regis, Luxury Collection, Westin, Sheraton, Four Points and W subsidiaries, is one of the leading hotel and leisure companies in the world with more than 700 hotels in 76 countries and 130,000 employees at its owned and managed properties.

* "Sleeping on the Road." A Sleep Study by Westin Hotels & Resorts was conducted by Guideline Research and consulting of New York City, a national market research and public opinion polling firm. The study is based on a nationwide telephone survey of 600 business executives. Qualifying respondents took at least one business trip totaling three or more consecutive nights in a hotel during the past year. The executives ranged from sales managers to presidents and chief executive officers in companies with annual revenues of $50 million or more. Interviews were conducted between July 2 and July 23, 1999. The surveys averaged 20 minutes in length and have a margin of error on the totals of +/-4.0%.

K.C. Kavanagh
914 640-8339

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