From Booking.com’s “Reboot Retreaters” prediction to sleep suites in hotels, travellers are yearning for a good snooze

I suppose it is ironic that I am writing about sleep in a city that doesn’t sleep but travelling to New York on that epic 18-hour flight from Singapore has a tendency to send anyone’s body clock into disarray.

And trust me, over the years, I have tried everything. Supplements. Exercise. Exposure to light. Including advice from Dr Matthew Walker, the sleep expert which goes like this – “get exposure to natural daylight, especially in the first half of the day. Avoid stimulants, like caffeine, and sedatives, like alcohol, later in the day. If you can’t sleep, get out of bed and do a relaxing activity away from the bedroom, such as reading in dim light. Only return to bed when you’re sleepy.”

I wonder if “relaxing activity” includes writing at 4am.

Once, I even tried an app called Time Shifter.

My fellow editor at Travel Weekly, Arnie Weissmann, takes it even more seriously than me. Once he showed up in Singapore with glasses that emitted flashes of blue light and residents of Joo Chiat thought I was taking an alien on a tour of Katong.

He’s now trying glasses that sends flashes of light direct into your eyes. I am not sure it’s working. When I saw him in Singapore this time round for Cruise World Asia, he looked as done in as I feel right now.

Flying over New York, the city that doesn’t sleep

Apparently, with these glasses, you have to wake up at designated times to activate the flashes – so why would you wake up after you’ve been desperately trying to sleep to send flashes of light into your eyes?

I have a friend in Singapore who’s ordered a special mattress from Sydney that apparently regulates your body temperature, so you get a good night’s rest.

I wish Open AI, in its last Developers conference which seems to have sent everyone into a tizzy as to how it will make millionaires of all of us smart enough to use it for just about everything, would solve jetlag.

Because clearly, other than Generative AI, “revenge jetlag” and “sleep tourism” have become really big topics.

Remember how in the old days, we’d ask people we meet “how are you” which became “where are you” with the advent of the mobile phone and now we ask fellow travellers and friends, “how was your sleep”?

Because sleep has become the most desired activity, given more than 60% of us do not get enough of it, according to a global sleep survey (across 12 countries) conducted by Philips and KJT Group in 2019.

In Booking.com’s latest Travel Predictions for 2024, the number one item is Reboot Retreaters: The rise of sleep tourism. Says the study, “In a world that never seems to slow down, travellers are booking trips to reconnect with the lives they truly desire. The emerging trend of sleep tourism introduces sleep concierges and cutting-edge tech to cater to the 66% of APAC-based travelers who seek to prioritize uninterrupted rest during their journeys”.

Which was why I had an aha moment when I went on a tour of the new COMO Metropolitan Singapore and I was told it has four suites which offer the SleepHub®, “a groundbreaking sleep aid that improves your natural sleeping patterns to give you the best possible rest”.

The press release adds, “A sleep optimization solution using neuroscience and sound technology, SleepHub® trains the brain to sleep optimally and is backed by years of scientific research, development, and trials by Cambridge Sciences.”

It comes with a COMO Shambhala eye mask set*, COMO Shambhala Sleep Balm** and a serving of Chamomile tea.

I am told that it can give you seven hours of good quality sleep.

Well, I know where I am headed on my return from this trip.

The SleepHub at COMO Orchard, Singapore

Meantime, onwards I go to Fort Lauderdale to attend the annual Phocuswright conference whose theme is “You, Me & The Machine”. It kicks off this week with more than 1,000 travel industry leaders gathering to discuss the latest trends and disruptions in travel and I guess, sleep since there will be many of us coming in from outside the US.

Me, I really wish they’d invent a “sleep machine” but maybe that’s the wrong way to think about it because this quote by Gillian Flynn, author of Gone Girl, “Sleep is like a cat: It only comes to you if you ignore it” may be the one worth sleeping on.