Smart Meetings

Bed Hopping

June 2006

Quick Quips

Have you have gone from worrying about losing sleep in an unfamiliar hotel bed, to anticipating a better night’s sleep than you’ll get at home?

They’re out there in hotels across the nation, waiting to envelop us in smothering splendor. You’ve undoubtedly already experienced the phenomenon of these bigger, deeper, cushier beds topped with three layers of sheets, interspersed with duvets, down blankets and topped with six pillows. In the mega-bed, no crevice of your body remains unsupported. So now you have gone from worrying about losing sleep in an unfamiliar hotel bed, to anticipating a better night’s sleep than you’ll get at home.

Starwood’s Westin brand inaugurated the trend with the Heavenly Bed in 1999 and thereby raised the competitive bar. Not to be outdone, Marriott launched the Marriott Bed with its Revive Collection of bedding, and Radisson brought in the well-recognized Sleep Number Bed. Hilton introduced its Hilton Serenity Collection and Hyatt set up the Hyatt Grand Bed.

There’s been a trickle-down effect, as well. In April, Holiday Inn Express introduced its Simply Smart Triple Sheeted Bedding and, not to be outdone, BridgeStreet Worldwide, one of the world’s largest corporate housing and serviced-apartment providers, has now placed its SleepEasy bedding package in all of its standard apartments nationwide.

After Westin’s early competitive advantage, it looks like the playing field is leveling off again, and at considerable cost on all sides.

While all changes produce unanticipated ripples, there are operating costs that go beyond the hotel’s expense in providing the luxury bed sets (guests who wish to purchase the restful king-size bedding pay a hefty $2,000 to $3,000, according to Gabi Baumann, an industry consulting and valuation analyst with HVS International). Some of these include bigger laundry bundles and, therefore, higher energy costs. However, there is also the greater time it takes housekeeping to refresh those elaborate layers and the resulting decreased efficiency in turning the rooms.

But there is an added human cost to consider, which is being borne day in and day out by the women who change all those layers of bedding. A report entitled “Creating Luxury, Enduring Pain,” presented during the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health’s 2006 National Occupational Research Agenda symposium, provides statistics that rate housekeeping the most injurious occupation within the hotel arena. The timeframe covered by the study was an overlap with that of the big beds. “Between 1999 and 2005, housekeepers faced a 61.4% higher risk of injury,” the report states, “compared to all hotel workers.”

Further, the trend appears to be moving in the wrong direction; between 2002 and 2005, housekeepers had a 71% higher risk of injury relative to  all hotel workers, according to statistics compiled  by occupational medicine experts in conjunction with UNITE HERE, a labor union. The American Hotel and Lodging Association counters with 2004 U.S. Labor Department statistics showing that hotel and motel workers were actually less likely to be injured than employees of other service industries such  as hospitals, warehouse clubs, department stores and grocery stores.

Whatever the outcome of this simmering  dispute, the trend toward the branded bedecked
bed is here to stay and the hotel guest is the  fortunate beneficiary.