“I could never understand why the vast majority of hotel beds were so uncomfortable, unattractive and uninviting,” Barry Sternlicht, then-CEO of Westin parent company Starwood Hotels & Resorts, said in a 1999 news release. “It was inconceivable to me that hotels – in the business of selling sleep – paid so little attention to their beds.”
Hospitality industry experts say unlike the uninspiring mattresses and dark, dingy bed covers common in non-luxury hotels, Westin’s new all-white offering provided a stark difference with a pillow-top mattress, three sheets, a covered duvet and a pile of pillows.
Let the bed wars begin
Westin’s move dropped a fluffy white bomb into the industry, waking hoteliers up to the idea that comfortable sleep was important to guests – and could be a selling point.
“If you look at hotel bedding … in more mainstream hotels, you have before Westin, and then you have after Westin,” said travel analyst Henry Harteveldt, who called the company’s bed move “truly revolutionary”.
Over the years that followed, the competitive race to match the Heavenly Bed became known as the “hotel bed wars”, with other lodging companies updating their own mattresses and linens.
“Virtually every major chain is trying to outdo its rivals,” the Wall Street Journal wrote in a 2005 story covering Marriott’s bedding reinvention. A Marriott news release said the project cost about US$190 million ($337m) across several brands; at its namesake chain, the update added two more pillows, a mattress cover, a bed scarf, a white duvet and 300-thread-count sheets to hotel beds. More than a decade after the companies started fighting it out over mattresses, Marriott International acquired Starwood, making Westin part of its portfolio.
Peggy Roe, executive vice-president and chief customer officer at Marriott, worked on the company’s salvo in the bed battle early in her career there.
“I remember thinking, ‘well, that kind of makes sense. People are staying there to sleep’.”
Roe said the notion of white bedding seemed strange at the time because of the effort it took to keep it all clean.
“I think we were all still nervous about all-white beds,” she said. “Today it’s … all-white beds everywhere.”
Heavenly Bed: The next chapter
Westin has sought to raise its game, rolling out a “next-generation Heavenly Bed” last year. Out: the bed skirt, bolster pillow, down as a filling and the all-white palette. In: temperature-regulating technology in the mattresses, hypoallergenic materials and – gasp – a charcoal blanket to create a more residential feel. The brand settled on the new look and feel after starting the process in 2016 and testing thousands of products.
“We want our guest to kind of have that emotional connection of, ‘oh, wow, I want to jump into that bed’,” Catherine Flint, who was Westin’s senior director of global brand management at the time, said last year. “That was one of our biggest challenges and opportunities, was how can we make sure that the next generation remains heavenly and that you can feel it with your eyes.”
Beds, and sleep in general, remain important to hotels, with some going as far as to offer a “sleep concierge”. Sleep tourism has become a buzz phrase as more people become aware of the health benefits of good sleep.
Chekitan Dev, a professor at Cornell University’s Nolan School of Hotel Administration, said in an email hotels are tackling the “overall sleep experience” to stand out, especially from alternatives such as Airbnb.
“Today, hotels that I work with are trying to harmonise all the requirements of a good night’s sleep: bed quality, air quality, noise elimination, room-darkening shades, diet, amenities (white noise, eyeshades, earplugs, sleep-enhancing lotions and potions etc),” he wrote. “They can differentiate effectively from short-term rentals and charge a premium over hotels that don’t care about this as much.”
Hotel beds at home
When hotels started improving their sleep set-ups, guests noticed. And they started wondering why hotel beds should have all the fun, said Harteveldt, the travel analyst.
“As hotels started to invest more in their mattresses, people started saying, ‘why should I be more comfortable in a hotel than in my own bed’?” he said.
Today, hotel companies, including Four Seasons, Sofitel, Hilton, Marriott, Wynn and W, sell their bedding products – often including box springs, mattresses and linens – straight to consumers. Westin’s entire package is available on the brand’s store for more than US$5300 ($9405) and at Pottery Barn; more than 500,000 of the branded beds have been sold. The chain even sells a Heavenly Dog Bed.
Livingston, who made the TikTok praising hotel beds, is aware of the hotel-to-home pipeline. She said her grandfather enjoyed a hotel bed so much that he ordered one.
She said she had tried to create a bed situation at her home that approximates what hotels offer: a “fine” mattress and “really nice sheets” with a high thread count. But it’s not the same.
“This one was, like, next level,” she said.
