Huffington Magazine Issue 70 | Page 47

COURTESY OF BROCK CLINE DREAM SERVICE it really disconcerting. I’ve been known to turn it to face the wall.” Rebecca Robbins envisions a time, not far from now, when every guest who steps up to the front desk of The Benjamin hotel in New York City will be greeted with the words, “Welcome to The Benjamin. Here we make your sleep a priority.” Robbins, the coauthor of Sleep for Success! and a Ph.D. candidate at Cornell, began working as a sleep consultant for The Benjamin this summer. She has led sleep sessions for the hotel’s employees to help them make sleep a priority, with the hope that their sleep practices will trickle down to the hotel’s guests. In developing a sleep program, Robbins took her inspiration from a very specific demographic: children. “Kids have a bedtime,” she said. “They get ready for bed.” Adults, she said, should mimic their bedtime rituals — a consistent bedtime, a bath or a shower, some light reading — to ease the body and the mind into sleep. “In our society, more than ever, we have a very on and off culture,” she said. “But all of the evidence says that you need to create a sanctuary for sleep.” Some hotels are going to great lengths to create those sanctuar- HUFFINGTON 10.13.13 ies. At The Benjamin, rooms feature only analog clocks. Guests can peruse a pillow menu that includes pillows filled with buckwheat or satin, with names like “Swedish memory” and “Lullaby.” Children arriving at the hotel are given a stuffed owl named Winks, complete with a printed backstory about what happened when he did not get a good night’s sleep. And guests can arrange for a “workdown call,” in which the concierge rings them up an hour before bedtime reminding them to stop working and put away their electronic devices. The Four Seasons, for its part, keeps a record of its guests’ pillow preferences. Last December, Brock Cline After staying at uncomfortable budget hotels on their crosscountry road trip, Brock Cline and Bre Garvin longed for a better way to sleep away from home.