Starwood Preferred Guest - Soft Launch Only - The Westin Jet-Lag Room

The Westin folks have come up with a new concept room (remember The Westin Work-out Room by Reebok?) which has value-added amenities, features, and components to help jet-lagged travelers recover more quickly and be more productive. It was designed in conjunction with Apollo Health, the Mayo Clinic, and Philips to create an optimal environment. Some of the accommodations in this concept room include the following:


Special Philips ActiViva lighting in the bathroom
Apollo Health’s GoLite that can be set nearby
A sound machine
Night-lights that come on automatically to light your path
A special fan to help circulate air
The "SleepTV" channel
Jet-Lag teas
Black-out curtains
A special door strip to prevent light from the hallway entering under the door-jamb

There is an in-room computer, to provide guests with a better understanding of the features and benefits.

So far, there are only one of these rooms available for guest use at The Westin Chicago River North. It cannot be sold through the property, online, or through the Customer Contact Center at the moment. However, if you happen to be a guest of this property who has traveled further than 4 hours and will be staying longer than two days, you may be offered an opportunity to experience it at check-in.

Once the Westin folks have had an opportunity to get feedback from guests concerning their experiences and suggestions for this room concept, you may see it offered more widely under the Westin-branded properties in confirmed room-type conditions and available in all sales avenues. Until then, if anyone from Flyertalk happens to stay in this room, please come back to this thread and give us some additional feedback.

Sincerely,


William R. Sanders
Customer Service Coordinator
Starwood Preferred Services

guest.forum@starwoodhotels.com

So there is ONE room in the entire Westin system?? :confused: How much feedback can you receive with that limited number?

Sounds like the Priority Club/Holiday Inn "Sleep" concept without the spray lavender and CD :)

sounds more like Hiltons Tranquility Rooms that I was able to experience 1st hand a few times already in different Hiltons in Europe and a few yaers ago at that.

Nice to see SPG playing Catch-up and jumping on the band0wagon although a bit late, better then never at All.

Cant comment on Westins room, but if its anything like the ones I had at those Hiltons the biggest problem was , I didnt want to leave it

Interesting concept.

However, there are two things in that list that I'd like to see in every room.

# Black-out curtains
# Curtain to prevent light from the hallway entering under the door-jamb

Of course, a properly placed towel can prevent the hallway light from coming in, but the curtain would be less wasteful.

One room on the planet is a mighty small test sample.... I'm wondering what a "go-light" is.:confused: :confused: :confused:

I travel with a goLite, so every room is a Westin Jet-Lag room for me. From the description I'm guessing that 90% of the value is from the goLite; it works great (and not just for jet lag!).

Chicago is a strange choice for beta site. The killer jet-lag flights are the 14 hour flights leaving at midnight and arriving at 6 am the next day (so 2 full days of daylight bracketing the flight along with the circa 12 hour time change). ORD simply doesn't have any flights arriving there like that!

One suggestion to the Westin marketing gurus is to figure out how to offer the room as an on-site upsell in addition to pre-booking. My guess is that with something like Jet lag, the effect is much worse after you've actually just gone through it. I'm afraid that people might not have enough foresight to: 1) Decide how bad jet lag really can be, 2) See the benefits of the room as something that will remedy that and 3) Select the room at a (potentially) higher cost.

One suggestion to the Westin marketing gurus is to figure out how to offer the room as an on-site upsell in addition to pre-booking. My guess is that with something like Jet lag, the effect is much worse after you've actually just gone through it. I'm afraid that people might not have enough foresight to: 1) Decide how bad jet lag really can be, 2) See the benefits of the room as something that will remedy that and 3) Select the room at a (potentially) higher cost.

Assuming the concept room takes off, we plan to offer this room type as a paid upgrade at check-in later this year.

Sincerely,


William R. Sanders
Customer Service Coordinator
Starwood Preferred Services

guest.forum@starwoodhotels.com

Did I miss something?? :confused:

Aha! 3 seconds of sleuthing and I came up with this:

http://www.apollolight.com/golite.html

Here in Maine, we call this sort of thing a "happy lamp" --- lots of folks up here in the great arctic north have Seasonal Affective Disorder (in short, they really miss the sunlight in the dark months of winter) and swear by these lamps that emit light similar to the sun.

I've never needed one (at least I don't think so), so I can't comment further. However, I always travel with a small sound machine to generate white noise so I don't hear doors slamming all night, water running in the walls, people talking in the hallways, etc.

I wish every hotel room on the planet had a sound machine. It would be very easy to incorporate into the radio/alarm with minimal incremental cost.

Thanks sbtinme! When Lurker mentioned that things were clarified I wondered if he was talking about the room or something. I appreciate your help. Here in the Pac NW where there is the highest concentration of SAD in the country we are all very familiar with light boxes and the such. Many companies actually provide them for employees during the winter months.

As far as a "paid upgrade" for this type of room. . .not sure that having black out curtains is something I'd pay extra for.

Agreed with the above. Good concept but not something I'd pay more for.

See, when I read the title (I know, don't judge a book by its cover), I had this vision of something akin to an airline's arrivals lounge: an area with showers, food, etc. designed for travelers arriving on overnight flights whose rooms aren't ready yet.

I'm sure there are a lot of times when travelers will do NY-London or LA-NY, get very little sleep, and have to be somewhere within hours despite the hotel not having a room ready. This would be especially useful for travelers who don't have an airline lounge available (flying coach, none at arriving airport, don't like the idea of hanging around said airport).

I am a little curious about the choice of hotels. Does Chicago have a higher percentage of travelers coming in overnight than say LA or London?

See, when I read the title (I know, don't judge a book by its cover), I had this vision of something akin to an airline's arrivals lounge: an area with showers, food, etc. designed for travelers arriving on overnight flights whose rooms aren't ready yet.

I'm sure there are a lot of times when travelers will do NY-London or LA-NY, get very little sleep, and have to be somewhere within hours despite the hotel not having a room ready. This would be especially useful for travelers who don't have an airline lounge available (flying coach, none at arriving airport, don't like the idea of hanging around said airport)....Most hotels already have this facility -- they just don't know how to market it. They foolishly put signs up saying "Fitness center" and "Health club" instead of "Jet Lag Lounge" and "Premium Traveler Amenity". On a serious note, I've yet to find a hotel that wouldn't let me use their gym and showers when my room wasn't ready (and store my bags).

Most hotels already have this facility -- they just don't know how to market it. They foolishly put signs up saying "Fitness center" and "Health club" instead of "Jet Lag Lounge" and "Premium Traveler Amenity". On a serious note, I've yet to find a hotel that wouldn't let me use their gym and showers when my room wasn't ready (and store my bags).

See, I'm as guilty as the hotels, as I never would think to ask that :p. I hate red-eyes and avoid them at all cost, but I'm sure I won't always be able to.

I'm excited about it just for the strip under the door.

I agree that blackout curtains would be nice.

I think that Westin was really cutting edge with the Heavenly Bed(r), and I find it amazing that it took as long as it did for hotels to realize that their bed should be their most important asset. I moved all of my hotel stays to Westin and WHotels when it came out. Now other chains have followed suit. I would like to see Westin also set the bar as far as "good night's sleep" in general. Things like soundproofing and lightproofing to me are huge selling points.

This is a great start!

Staying at the Crowne Plaza a couple of years ago when they started their good night's sleep program they had an ingenious (and low-cost!) idea - a "curtain clip." I was able to take it with me (they provided a kit with lavender spray, curtain clip, and CD) and used it quite a bit at hotels where the curtains didn't "quite" close. Unfortunately, I left it at a hotel but I now carry one of those "springy paperclips" and use it on the curtains - voila! Blackout curtains :)

Chicago is a strange choice for beta site. The killer jet-lag flights are the 14 hour flights leaving at midnight and arriving at 6 am the next day (so 2 full days of daylight bracketing the flight along with the circa 12 hour time change). ORD simply doesn't have any flights arriving there like that!

Agreed. I would've thought Asia would be the better location to test out this concept.

> I travel with a goLite

Do you then use it mornings in your hotel room?

Have you ever used it on a plane? Darkening the plane makes it even harder to adjust to a different time zone.

I have been looking at this for home: http://greenhome.com/products/lighting/lamps/111657/

Sylvia

Does the new concept come with a guarantee that housekeeping won't call or knock on the door when the DND sign is up, just to ask whether I'll be wanting later service or not? That would be the best jetlag feature I can think of. :p :p :p