Holiday Inn wants guests to enjoy an even better nights sleep

Stress and worry top the league table of factors causing sleepless nights, and women suffer more than men, according to research carried out for Holiday Inn Hotels & Resorts.

The findings of the survey alone will be of little comfort to those who spend much of the week working away from home, suffering restless nights, tossing and turning in their hotel bed. But the Holiday Inn response will be a dream come true for many weary travellers.

Based on the research, Holiday Inn has introduced a series of revolutionary measures to guarantee a good night’s sleep for guests at its worldwide chain of hotels and resorts.

Industry leading beds designed to stringent Holiday Inn comfort specifications are in. Out go blankets replaced by duvets to provide a more homely, snug, sleeping experience.

Also in comes a unique “pillow menu”, offering guests a choice of five pillow types - soft, medium or firm, synthetic or natural feather, pillows to suit those with allergies, and other traditional or local favourites such as the bolster-shaped pillow.

Holiday Inn has also introduced “Breakfast Checkout”, allowing guests to settle their bills over breakfast in the hotel restaurant, meaning there’s no rush to get to the reception desk to check out, and therefore more time to “lie-in”.

Guaranteeing a good night’s sleep is part of a new drive which has seen Holiday Inn launch its four brand hallmarks – Sleep, Breakfast, Can Do Service and Rewards – as part of a global campaign to make the most of the qualities its guests already appreciate best. Identified through intensive research, the Hallmarks are four main areas in which its customers say Holiday Inn provides great service, and outperforms its competitors.

Sleep experts say a bad night’s sleep can affect our ability to think, communicate and make decisions. Research carried out for Holiday Inn showed the major cause of sleepless nights was stress and worry (18%), with a startlingly high proportion of women (23%) worrying compared to men (13%). Other reasons for a disturbed night were noise (9%), disturbance by children (5%) or partners snoring (2%), illness (3%) and caffeine (2%).

Three out of ten people said nothing usually kept them awake at night, and almost half said they liked to curl up in a foetal position before drifting off. While 25% of travellers missed their family most while working away, one in six people pined for the comfort of their own bed, and one in twelve missed the space of their home, and privacy. Added to good service and good rates – both traditional Holiday Inn qualities - more comfortable bedding, less noise, and adjustable heating were among the top factors for improving the experience of staying in a hotel.

“Before launching Hallmarks, we went to enormous lengths to find out what our guests thought of Holiday Inn, what they liked most about us, and what business and leisure travellers didn’t particularly like about hotels in general,” said Atkinson.

Research also showed noise and light have a major impact on the quality of sleep. Holiday Inn has responded by pre-setting televisions to 45 per cent of volume capacity, and replacing high-pitched alarms with alarm clock buzzers to wake-up the guests, but not those in adjoining rooms. And new bedroom blackout curtains with parallel overlap curtain tracks block out the light.