Vacations in Dreamland
How to get the best sleep of your life.
Jeralyn here. It’s National Sleep Awareness Month (we nearly slept on it ourselves), and the travel industry is paying attention. Our inboxes have been flooded with promotions and pitches about “sleep wellness packages” at hotels tricked out with restorative massage treatments and silk eye masks. Some are cute; nearly all are marketing gimmicks designed to capitalize on a growing trend. But I have noticed that a few resorts are making serious and scientific attempts to help travelers find the rest that has been eluding them. That’s the more interesting story.
First, a bit of background: The Global Wellness Institute marked the emergence of the wellness tourism sector in 2013. We started seeing weight loss centers. Detox-to-retox boot camps. Lots of surf and yoga retreats. Athleisure apparel and in-room Peletons (during that year or two when nobody could go anywhere). The mainstreaming of Asian and European sauna culture in the U.S. (Though everything old is new again, culture works in cycles, yada yada.)
It may not be a coincidence that the rise in wellness offerings coincides with a rise in our collective stress, anxiety, and depression. According to Gallup, which has been polling U.S. adults about their sleep habits since 2001, last year marked the first time a majority of people (57%) said they do not get enough sleep — and that the sleep they do get is not restful. Yikes. People are not feeling their best!
The travel industry is here for it and has been turning to high-tech measures to help guests get back to the basics of good sleep. The new supercharged “active lifestyle” hotel brand Siro, for example, which launched last year in Dubai and opens in Montenegro in May, ranks sleep as one of its five key pillars and designed its high-tech rooms as luxuriously restorative sanctuaries, with features like thermoregulating mattresses and eleven pillow options. For those who have a notoriously bad time at bedtime, a nice hotel environment (even tone with black-out shades and Bryte beds) won’t cut it. For someone who wants to feel like they’re taking a real break, a sleep lab can feel a little too sterile (and not a great place to bring a partner or friend).
But a few state-of-the-art wellness centers are fusing modern and ancient methods to relax body and mind to affect psycho-physical wellbeing. And they’re doing it in resort settings that are beautiful and immersive — on picturesque Lake Lucerne in Switzerland, in a nature park on the Mediterranean, hugging the coast of Thailand, and even right in the middle of New York City.