It’s Time To Swipe Right On A New Bedtime Routine
Stephanie Hall, Group Director of Sales & Marketing at Exclusive Collection
Published on October 25, 2019
The weekend’s impending change to winter hours has opened a whole new thought process for me. As a hotelier, I’m in the business of sleep:
Across the Collection we have 462 bedrooms to keep at full occupancy 365 days a year. Factor in an optimal 8 hours sleep per night with an average of 1.5 people per room and that’s 2,023,560 hours sleep per annum that the team is responsible for!
It adds a whole new perspective to my role and is another factor to consider alongside events, food and beverage, weddings and spa!
However, achieving sleep is becoming a major problem for many people due to multiple factors. Lack of sleep is at such a proportion that it has a global set of analytics and new terminology associated with it including phrases such as ‘sleep hygiene’ and more markedly ‘public health problem’.
According to Rand Organisation’s report: ‘Why Sleep Matters’, each year the USA loses an equivalent of 1.23 million working days due to insufficient sleep, Japan loses 0.6 million and the UK 0.2 million days. Sleep-poor workers are more likely to be absent from work due to sickness or have reduced performance leading to losses in efficiency. It’s the same for school children with poor sleep affecting individual skills development.
A survey conducted by sleep expert Dr Nicola Barclay highlights the harsh reality that the UK is a nation of bad sleepers with the average UK resident sleeping for between 5.78 and 6.83 hours per night, in contrast to the 6.9 hours global average of adults over the age of 25.
The causes are numerous. From lifestyle and health factors to workplace pressures and personal factors; people with BMI’s that are considered obese sleep 2.5-7 minutes less per day than those with a healthy BMI and the consumption of more than 2 sugary drinks a day can lead to an average 3.4 minutes less sleep per day, with lack of exercise causing another loss of 2.6 minutes.
However, it’s our inability to go offline that has to be one of the biggest contributing factors. We read the daily news online, we organise our social life online, we communicate for work online, we get recommendations online, we check the traffic and we stream TV online - generally on our mobile phone. Despite there being a correlation between being online and not sleeping, there is little respite as we observe, judge and like the world online. We all know a digital detox would pay dividends, so why aren’t we doing it?
As a company, we are committed to the wellbeing of both our guests and our teams. Wellbeing is a key pillar of our business and for our people we have forward-thinking programmes to develop, nurture and retain our teams.
We have designed our guest bedrooms to encourage sleep by creating beautiful surroundings that encourage a real-time, me-time digital detox. Our beds have English handcrafted EPOC mattresses as standard and we offer a pillow menu that adapts to differing guest needs. Add in temperature-controlled rooms (16-18 degrees is the sleep sweet spot), Egyptian cotton sheets, blackout curtains and tranquil settings, and the scene is set for sleep.
This weekend’s impending clock change is not going to eliminate the nation’s issues around sleep overnight but an extra hour in bed can only help.
With my new take on the subject, that’s around an extra 693 hours of shut eye our guests will be collectively enjoying this weekend. And while my eyes have been opened on the extra hour of sleep - they for sure will be firmly shut on Sunday morning!
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