Here is the snooze

from Times Online, Susan d’Arcy reports

Spas are waking up to the fact that sleep, not a mango wrap, is the key to holistichappiness. Sleep has become the bottled water of the hospitality industry. It might be readily available for free, but hotels have been investing millions as they compete to provide guests with the dreamiest night’s rest ever.

You can now slip between cashmere sheets costing thousands of pounds at the Principe di Savoia, in Milan; or choose from a 20-strong pillow menu at Frégate Island, in the Seychelles (including an antiageing one infused with vitamin E, and an eco-friendly version made from buckwheat spelt). It’s possible to engage the services of a sleep concierge at the Benjamin, in New York, and snuggle up on a mattress costing £14,000 at Cotswold House, in Gloucestershire. You can even do a Victor Kiam: Westin sells its Heavenly Bed mattresses from £1,200; adding the linen, pillows and duvet cover with overstuffed polyester insert will cost from £2,200. A Sheraton Sweet Sleeper or a Sofitel MyBed will set you back similar sums.

iF the pillow fights have been intense up to now, sleep is about to move into a whole other league. Luxury SpaFinder magazine, recently declared sleep the new wellness frontier. And unlike some overhyped, must-try treatments, for which the only sensible course of action is to back slowly out of the room, smiling (the facial featuring nightingale droppings, the massage that slithers snakes across your back, having your toes read), this hot trend is actually sensible. Many scientific studies have linked lack of sleep to poor health, increased stress levels and obesity.

American spas were the first to identify that a good night’s sleep is one sure way to a spa-goer’s wallet; some of the best even employ directors of sleep. Canyon Ranch, one of the USA’s most influential wellness companies, was a pioneer. The sleep-enhancement programme at its Arizona base comes with reassuring amounts of medical paraphernalia. Guests can spend the night in a sleep lab, where qualified doctors attach monitors to the guinea pig for a polysomnography test that will reveal brainwave patterns and establish possible causes for poor sleep. Based on these findings, the guest has consultations with behavioural therapists, exercise physiologists and nutritionists – surely enough to make even a committed insomniac ready for bed. The Pritikin Longevity Center and Spa, in Florida, also offers clinical diagnosis based on sophisticated monitoring, although it admits one of the main predictors of sleep apnoea, a common complaint, isn’t rocket science – you’re likely to suffer from it if your neck size is greater than 17½in. If you want the high-tech slumber number with five-star frills, the upmarket hotelier Four Seasons has teamed up with the California WellBeing Institute at its Westlake Village property, near Los Angeles.

Other spas take a more holistic, chimes’n’chants approach. The award-winning Red Mountain Spa, in Utah, holds regular sellout Sweet Art of Sleep Seduction workshops, which involve “fun and experiential” discussions on various ways to create the correct environment for sleep, such as prebed stretches, organic “zzzzzmersion” massages and a zMusic CD (“the gold standard of sleep music”, apparently). A professor from the University of Arizona works with the Miraval Resort, in Tucson: his “body, mind, spirit” perspective covers everything from eating habits to how you decorate your bedroom. The Mayflower, in Connecticut, advocates hypnotherapy and acupuncture. And, before you knock new-age methods, bear in mind that the World Health Organisation has approved acupuncture as a treatment for insomnia.

While New York might revel in its reputation as the city that never sleeps, some of its residents really wouldn’t mind a bit more shuteye. Yelo and MetroNaps both offer a refuge for a quick snooze, selling 20-to 40-minute slots in a “nod pod”, where customers are tucked in with cashmere blankets, a soporific soundtrack and a side order of reflexology.

Europe's been caught napping, but things are changing. The glitzy Fortina Spa Resort, on Malta, where Brad Pitt, Russell Crowe and the health secretary, Alan Johnson, have holidayed, is an early European innovator. It has just launched the first of 47 Wellness Rejuvenation Rooms, each fitted with £4,500 worth of sleep-inducing equipment, including a magnetic mattress, pillows and duvet. “They magnetise your entire body, relieving it of all aches, pains and stress,” the hotel says. “The proven benefits cover everything from encouraging deep-healing sleep to aiding the lymphatic system to release toxins.” The rooms also feature far-infrared technology that “detoxifies” the body, as well as an air purifier to recreate fresh mountain air.

The dynamic new six-star Capella Hotels company, created by Horst Schulze, who is widely regarded as one of the canniest hoteliers in the world, is also in the vanguard. Schulze is convinced that sleep education will play an important role at spas in the future, so Capella’s new flagship property, Schloss Velden, in Austria, will run a Sleep Health-Life Balance programme from September to March each year. Guests will be evaluated by professional trainers, nutritional coaches and medical experts, then given a customised week-long schedule, including spa treatments based on the moon’s phases, lectures, yoga classes and autogenic training – a relaxation technique designed to get you snoozing. They will also use pillows and duvets filled with Swiss stone pine strands, which, according to research by the University of Graz, induce better sleep.

In the UK, we’re way behind – although the Sanctuary day spa, in London, can claim a world first. Its spa director, Debi Green, spent more than a year and £90,000 developing the first low-frequency-sound-wave therapy beds for its new sleep retreat. The theory is that sound waves penetrate the muscles more gently and effectively than massage, releasing pain and tension, and lulling the user into a tranquil state. Most guests nod off quickly. One woman even reported having flashbacks to childhood memories – happy ones, fortunately. “We’re always a bit slower on spa innovations than the Americans,” Green says. “But sleep is so important to general health that I’m sure we’ll see lots of UK spas developing sleep programmes in future.”

Until then, a cup of cocoa and a DVD of Heaven’s Gate is probably still your best bet for nodding off – although the latter could also cause nightmares.