Staying in a decent hotel room can be an absolute pleasure and delight after a long day of travelling or work. Maybe your hotel stay is for recreational purposes, but the common thread that runs through a good hotel room is the luxurious bed.
While some budget hotel rooms can be an austere experience, an up-class hotel can be the polar opposite surrounding you with opulence and grandeur.
The hotel’s amenities often go overlooked while guests choose to enjoy the luxury of their room and, in particular, the sumptuous bed.
However, the hotel industry is mature, and hoteliers know how to entice guests and make a great hotel room.
The perfect hotel mattress is more than just the mattress, as I am sure you have experienced this.
Hotel room design is more of a science than a design process, and the hotel mattress is part of a sensory experience.
The appearance of high-quality furnishings and decor that you may expect to find in the residence of a dignitary is part of the experience.
Hoteliers understand that sleep is a big issue for a couple of nights for many guests who are only residents. Sleep is a significant issue, and sleeping in a strange bed for many of us is challenging.
Sleeping in strange surroundings is an issue for most of us, and I guess it’s an inbuilt defence mechanism that is no longer needed. So everything is done to make your stay at the hotel comfortable.
Clearly, the mattress is a massive part of the sensory experience, and mattress manufacturers compete to meet exacting standards to make the best durable mattress at a commercially affordable price.
Being a mattress supplier to a large hotel chain can be enormously profitable and give kudos to the company when it comes to further marketing campaigns.
We all wish to have the best mattress in our home and at the hotel.
So Why Are Hotel Beds So Comfortable?
In a nutshell, the hotel is invested in the very best mattress and bedding that will give the guest the ultimate luxury experience while residing at the hotel.
Hotel beds meet many strict criteria. Not only do they need to offer exceptional comfort, but the mattress also has to provide long-term value with durability.
There is a wide range of mattress types for the hotelier to choose from.
Hotel mattresses are often high-quality spring mattresses with a comfortable memory foam topper. This combination gives the perfect marriage of support and comfort, providing for a great night’s rest.
Other perfect choice mattresses include hybrid mattresses. The hybrid mattress is a combination of the best of both worlds, a traditional spring mattress with a layered memory foam mattress on top.
The hybrid mattress offers different benefits to the mattress with the addition of a memory foam topper.
Hybrid mattresses are constructed of high-quality springs that can be highly comfortable in their own right. Still, when combined with memory foam layers, the hybrid mattress takes on a different personality.
This combination provides some of the best performance in quality sleep and durability.
Other mattress choices are available to the hotelier, such as latex mattresses, which can be an excellent choice for a good night’s rest when manufactured to exacting standards.
Hotel Quality Mattresses
Be under no illusion that the hotel mattress needs to offer the ultimate support for various body types and sizes. This is no mean feat for the manufacturer.
The quality mattress needs to appeal to all of the hotel guests, if the mattress is terrible, then it is unlikely the guest will return, and word of mouth spreads fast in the corporate world.
A good mattress not only looks enticing but provides support to the pressure points of your body. A quality mattress ventilates, keeping the sleeper cool and comfortable through the night.
It is rare to find a soft mattress in a hotel room. This is for a good reason. Most of us don’t have soft mattresses at home.
The hotel tries to emulate the mattress you are used to sleeping on at home, which in most cases is a medium-firm to the harder mattress.
While soft mattresses appear to be an excellent option for a restful night’s sleep, the truth is they can be very uncomfortable after prolonged laying in a single position. A soft mattress rarely offers support to the joints and allows our body and, more importantly, the spine to take a shape that causes stress.
A good mattress will promote support and cooling.
For this reason, the innerspring hybrid mattress is a preferred choice. Innerspring mattresses allow good air circulation around the spring section of the hybrid mattress, which transfers cooler air to the memory foam supportive section.
If you have ever slept on memory foam, you will know that the foam mattress can sleep hot, causing a restless night sleep.
Memory foam mattresses can sleep hot. These weird and wonderful technologies are being incorporated into the memory foam to disperse the heat build-up and make the mattress a more popular choice.
Memory foam can now be purchased with a cooling gel interspersed throughout the mattress.
The cooling gel usually is in the form of beads and does an excellent job of drawing heat away in a wicking effect from the sleeper. The heat absorbed by the gel beads disperses across the day when the mattress is not being used.
We can expect to see more of these wonderfully supportive and very comfortable mattresses being used by hoteliers in the future utilizing this technology.
There are other mattresses available to the hotelier, such as feather down and polyester fillings. These types of mattresses offer little compared with their counterparts and have or are being phased out.
They offer very little in the way of support and comfort or heat dissipation.
Adding Comfort to an Existing Mattress
Many hotels have excellent mattresses, and commercial economies of scale dictate that replacing mattresses at regular intervals is unsuitable for the bottom line.
Fortunately for the hotelier, there is a range of super memory foam bed toppers to add comfort to existing traditional style mattresses and, at the same time, may extend the usability of a mattress coming to the end of its usable life.
The extra layer of cushioning provides support and comfort to the hotel guest. In many cases, the guest would never know he is sleeping on a mattress topper. The mattress topper provides exceptional sleeping performance and can easily be indistinguishable from a hybrid mattress by most guests.
The mattress topper is the ideal solution for providing sleep performance in guest rooms that are furnished on a lower budget without compromising the standards of the sleep experience.
Mattress toppers are an exciting proposition for many reasons. The cost of the mattress topper is cheaper than replacing the complete mattress.
A mattress topper can revitalize a bed and extend its life.
When used in conjunction with a good base mattress, Mattress toppers will extend the life of the base mattress for many more years.
In addition to everything great about the memory foam mattress topper, they can be versatile. If two guests are sharing the same bed with extra comfort and support requirements, it is possible to offer a split mattress topper and provide the guests with their exact requirements.
The mattress topper is the perfect solution for any hotelier regardless of clientele. The mattress topper is an affordable option to provide paying guests with an excellent sleep experience.
It’s Not All About the Mattress
From the moment you check into the hotel, the sensory overload and psychological offensive has started. In some hotels, your expectations will be met with an experience that is unlike any other.
Your bags are all in your room when you enter, and you are greeted by the bed, the centrepiece of the room. The furnishings look modern and sumptuous with soft-touch neutral fabrics.
Your expectations have not been met so far in any way. This is the lifestyle you were born to live!
The carpet beneath your feet has a deep pile, and the quality oozes from every corner of the room.
The drapes glide effortlessly, and the room is excellent; the view is irrelevant in most cases.
The shower is a creation to behold with perfect tiling and water pressure that rinses away the day’s stresses.
Then comes the bed
The bed is adorned with soft, sumptuous cushions. You imagine how princes and princesses live. It’s a feeling of achievement. You have arrived.
You pull the duvet back, and the crisp, clean bedsheets greet you. The mattress is soft but firm to provide the best in comfort.
The pillows are soft but seem to fit the contours of your neck. How perfect is this hotel room?
The truth is high-end hotel rooms are designed in this way. Why? The sensory experience from the moment you checked in started, the smiling, friendly staff, the marble floors, the plush carpet in your room.
It is all building your expectations. You expect the very best for your dollars, and the hotel is going to deliver. One slip up from the hotel, and the experience is not the same.
With your senses tingling, your expectations are being met in every aspect. Your mattress feels fantastic, the best you have ever experienced.
Your recommendations to friends and family are essential. Repeat business to the hotel is essential.
This is why you have a quality mattress, quality pillows that offer support and comfort. It’s a whole package that has been designed with the guest in mind.
Your bed sheets have been ironed before being placed on your bed for your ultimate satisfaction and comfort.
Imagine the opposite scenario, a grumpy receptionist carrying your bags to the room—an average shower, a clean room but nothing special.
How impressed with the bed are you?
This image of a hotel room conjures up a budget room which is somewhere just to get your head down for the night. Arrive late and leave early.
There is no sensory overload in the second scenario, and the bed may be magnificent, comfortable, and supportive with an ok pillow.
In your mind, you have not even given the mattress and pillow a second thought, and you slept ok that’s all that counts.
Your perception of the room and the comfort of that room start at the reception and maybe the market materials of the hotel.
The first scenario offers luxury and comfort, which you have perceived as one of the best hotel rooms you have stayed in, and the second scenario offers a budget experience.
Both scenarios have good beds. Which one will you remember, which one has left an indelible mark in your mind?
It’s not always about the mattress; comfort is different for all of us. Comfort is personal. What I find comfortable may be a nightmare for you. But we have one thing in common, we both need to sleep well and feel refreshed in the morning or at whatever time we wake.
When Comfort Is the Last Word
When comfort is the hotel’s priority, you will find your hotel room as some nice accessories for your enjoyment.
The bed will have multiple comforters for a feeling of luxury and warmth. Comforters help and aid in restful sleep and offer a certain level of warmth when you are sleeping.
Your comforter is likely filled with soft down feathers. The comforter should have baffles stitched in to prevent the clumping of feathers at one end.
Hotel comforters usually are broader and longer than the ones we might use at home to give that extra feeling of luxury.
The duvet will be of the very best quality, feeling soft to the touch for the ultimate in sleep.
Sheets
Hotel sheets not only need to feel great on the skin, but they also need to be durable and withstand the rigours of constant laundering.
Egyptian cotton is likely to be used for the bedsheets. It feels cool and silky to the touch. They will certainly provide a wonderful experience when paired with a great mattress.
The bedsheets will be ironed for your additional comfort. Interestingly hotels tend to use flat sheets and are not fitted, and they may be fitted under a sheet. Flat sheets can be stretched and, with right corners when made up, tend not to crumple and wrinkle through the night like a fitted sheet.
Pillows
The humble pillow is anything far from humble. A wrong pillow choice will prevent you from having a decent night’s sleep and may even leave you with a stiff neck in the morning.
Hoteliers typically provide four pillow sets which may seem excessive but are done for an excellent reason.
The pillow sets will be a combination of firmness. Two pillows will be a softer construction and two a firmer construction. There is no right or wrong combination. It’s all personal preference.
Many people tend to use the softer pillows when longing on the bed reading or to watch a movie. Firmer pillows will give the spine more support, which is the best option for optimal night’s sleep in most cases.
Pillows are not restricted to the head. You may decide to use one of the pillows to sleep with between your legs. If you don’t do this as a norm, then it is worth experimenting with.
Sleeping with a pillow between your legs will not only provide additional comfort by relieving pressure points when side sleeping. The leg pillows help to keep the spine aligned and can help sciatic nerve pain.
Give it a try. You have plenty of pillows and comforters to use. Make the most of your experience.
Ambience
We touched on this earlier, but it is an essential factor in your perception and expectations of comfort.
A calming room with cool decor is conducive to a sense of well-being. Clutter-free rooms decorated in the hotel’s theme will give a sense of serenity, and your perception of comfort will be enhanced, giving a more pleasurable experience.
If your hotel is trendy, they may have incorporated some of the ancient Chinese practices of Feng Shui to enhance the alluring appeal of the room.
You may think, like many folks, that Feng Shui is garbage but, it does have some calming effects and, incorporated into a design, can come up with some surprisingly pleasant decor.
Does it work? Who knows, if it works for you and is pleasing in the eyes of the majority of us, then I guess it works.
Your hotel room is your haven to unwind from the day’s stresses, relax and kick back and if the decor helps with this process, then the hotel room is good for you.
The combination of relaxing decor will make your mattress and surrounding feel comfortable.
The whole package of comfort is, at best, art and maybe science. There is a common perception of comfort that runs through us all, but we are all individuals.
Hotel Mattresses
Some of the top hotels throughout the world do not adhere to one kind of mattress. With so many competitive mattress manufacturers in the market, the correct purchasing decision for hotels can be complex, particularly for international hotels.
International hotels tend to opt for mattress customizing. Different regions and cultures can have different ideas of comfort in a mattress.
For instance, Middle eastern hotels are incredibly luxurious. The more extensive clientele is a business user who will pay market rates based on supply and demand. The local population is comparatively wealthy and will pay for opulent luxury.
European hotels tend to be more owner-operator style hotels where furnishings are less generic and representative of individual taste. Such hotels are less likely to compete with international chain hotels.
This doesn’t mean that mattresses are any less comfortable and the rooms are austere. On the contrary, some are exceptionally comfortable and have good value for money. However, the focus may not be so much on the mattress but more on the food experience.
A decent independent hotel will invariably supply a quality room with a good bed, generally with a memory foam topper for comfort.
For most, this is adequate and provides the comfort we all expect when paying for a room to sleep in.
Conclusion
As we now know, many factors contribute to how comfortable a hotel mattress is, and some of those factors have nothing to do with the mattress.
It is reasonable for us to expect a good night’s sleep regardless of budget and needs from a hotel mattress, along with a clean, clutter-free room.
It is incumbent on the hotelier to provide a mattress aligned with industry standards, which means a mattress that will offer good support and comfort to the guest.
Together with the mattress, supportive pillows are a must. The best mattress in the world will fail the sleep test without good pillows.
Do we need all; of the other accessories? You know it all comes down to budget. If you have experienced a top hotel, it’s hard to disagree that the experience is not worth the money.
However, money is not the only criteria for you to have a good night’s sleep in a hotel, and hotels that fail to keep up with sleep technology and comfort will lose business as a result.
The hotel world is competitive, to say the very least.