Businessweek
Hotels Add Pillow Menus, Plant Milk to Get Travelers to Sleep
Even luxurious accommodations can’t rewire your brain for a good night’s rest. Here’s how to get the best rest while you’re on the road.
Avoid the minibar, pick the right pillow and drift off to dreamland.
Illustrations by Moritz Wienert
When you’re tossing and turning in a hotel bed, blame your cavemen ancestors. “It’s an evolutionary response,” says Rebecca Robbins, an instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School and co-author of Sleep for Success! Everything You Must Know About Sleep But Are Too Tired to Ask.
You can be in the most luxurious surroundings possible, Robbins says, but if you don’t feel safe, you won’t sleep well. “When we are traveling,” she says, “our brain is on higher alert than it is in a known environment.”