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MY NIGHT IN A VIRGIN BED

And what made it good for me

by Madelyn Miller

Sleeping in nearly 200 hotel room beds a year, gives me a lot of opportunity to appreciate a good night.

And a recent stay at the new Westin Riverwalk in San Antonio, Texas was one of the best nights ever. Unfortunately, I was alone. But fortunately, I was the very first body to sleep in a special new Westin bed. It made me agree that great sleep beats great sex according to a new survey studying travelers� sleeping habits on the road.�

New Westin Sleep Study Says that Sleeping in Hotels isn�t Always a Dream

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.

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.�� Westin recently put 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 BeautyrestTM 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.
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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.

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%).��

And with all this wonderful sleep in San Antonio, what else did I do? Enjoyed the Riverwalk, shoped in the Mercado and the River Center Mall, dined in fabulous restaurants like La Caliza Grille, and Anaqua and sat on the patio under the age-old Cypress trees and enjoyed a margarita.

The Westin Riverwalk combines the grandeur of an elegant mansion, the warmth of Southern Hospitality and the excitement of the Riverwalk better than any place in the world.

The Westin Riverwalk
420 West Market Street
San Antonio, Tx 78205
210-224-6500
fax 210-444-6000
http://www.westin.com
800-Westin-1

San Antonio
http://www.sanantoniocvb.com
800-447-3372

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