How sleep tourism became a booming business for hotels

Set on a serene campus featuring adobe walls and eucalyptus trees, Canyon Ranch Tucson offers a unique travel experience. This Arizona property is credited with creating the wellness resort concept. But one of its latest trendy offerings isn’t focused on the top-notch spa, excellent cuisine, or hiking trails that tend to get raves from well-heeled travelers. Rather, it’s a multiday immersion trip focused on the experience of, well, doing nothing at all. The Mastering Sleep Retreat, which started in 2022, offers guests the chance to attend lectures about how supplements and exercise impact their rest; get sleep assessments and overnight monitoring from board-certified physicians, registered nurses, and dietitians; and learn science-backed strategies to overcome stress and strain and get on a better sleep cycle at home. [Photo: Canyon Ranch] The experience is one example of the current boom in sleep tourism, which has been fully embraced by luxury boutiques and industry giants including Hilton and Marriott. Overlapping with the ever-expanding wellness industry, sleep tourism is a $640 billion global market that may top $1 billion by 2028, according to HTF Market Intelligence estimates. Park Hyatt properties offer sleep suites furnished with Bryte smart beds, whose AI-powered mattresses purport to “unlock restorative sleep.” At Kamalaya Koh Samui resort in Thailand, guests can indulge in traditional Chinese medicine as well as IV therapy and hyperbaric oxygen and ozone treatments. Even mattress maker Hästens opened up a Sleep Spa hotel in Portugal in 2021. Guests can get sleep analysis from medical professionals; AI-enhanced, technologically sophisticated beds that provide better sleep; pillow menus; and special diets and services to restore the body’s rhythms and guarantee an exemplary rest. Sleep meditations, sleep trackers, and sleep playlists can be found at discerning hotels across the world.  “Sleep is just one piece of the puzzle,” says Chekitan Dev, a distinguished professor at Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration. “Sleep well goes with eat well, exercise well, play well, work well, and love well—all potential parts of a hotel stay.” [Photo: Hilton] Sleep’s big moment Sleep—both our culture’s obsession with it, and the clinical drive to better understand our nocturnal lives—has been a current fascination. When Rebecca Robbins, a Harvard professor and sleep researcher, started studying the topic in 2009, she says it was far from a sexy field; her mentors openly questioned her decision to devote her career to our non-waking hours. Now she works as an adviser and consultant to the Hilton hotel chain, just one of the myriad hospitality giants seeking to cash in on our fitful existence (and find another selling point to stand apart from short-term rental options).  “Wellness is an integral part of everything, and it’s just almost common sense for these hotels in these hospitality groups to do this,” says Anthony Vennare, cofounder of Fitt Insider, a wellness industry newsletter. “I look at it almost like a negative check. Why aren’t they doing these things?” Mental health, diet, fitness, social media, and hustle culture have all contributed to America’s national sleep deficit; only a third of us get enough rest each night. But the true shift that sent sleep studies—and sleep tourism—into overdrive was the COVID-19 pandemic, Robbins says.  During the first few weeks of the pandemic, despite the stress of the moment, most people stayed home and experienced extra sleep (studies estimate about 25 minutes on average). Robbins called this a global controlled experiment to showcase the value of more rest. Along with the enhanced wellness focus that came out of the pandemic, this awakening helped cement a larger cultural interest in more and better rest.  The response has been a rise in what Fitt Insider calls more investment and spending on the sleep stack: wearables, bedding, apps, therapeutics, and other tools to get better rest. And, of course, a larger market for sleep tourism.  [Photo: Hilton] Sleep is the new wellness retreat Sleep has been a pretty big focus of the hotel industry since its inception. Even recent history has shown the value of making better rest a selling point: Consider the Westin hotel chain’s Heavenly Bed campaign of the late ’90s, which sold the idea of a better night’s rest with a more relaxing mattress. And for decades, one subset of hotel customers made a better night’s rest a deal–breaker, according to Dev. Airline crews would sign lodging contracts guaranteeing higher floors, extra-dark blinds, special protocols for housekeeping and room service, and white noise machines. But that pales in comparison to the breadth and depth of sleep-related offerings on tap for today’s guests.  Mark Kovacs, VP of health and performance for Canyon Ranch resorts, says the types of treatments and techniques he used training elite ath