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
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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.