Holiday Inn Offers Human Bed Warmers: Staff Wear Hygenic Sleepers

by Mary Richard | January 26, 2010 at 06:29 am

2627 views | 94 Recommendations | 20 comments

The Holiday Inn hotel chain is now offering bed warming services at three of their hotels in Britain.

If requested, you can have a staff member slip between your sheets and warm your bed just before you retire. They'll wear an all-in-one hygienic fleece sleeper suit and slip out of your bed before you hop in.

"The new Holiday Inn bed warmers service is a bit like having a giant hot water bottle in your bed," Holiday Inn spokeswoman Jane Bednall said in an e-mailed statement.

Holiday Inn is promoting this new service on a trial basis with the help of sleep expert Chris Idzikowski, of Edinburgh Sleep Center.

"There's plenty of scientific evidence to show that sleep starts at the beginning of the night when body temperature starts to drop," he said. "A warm bed — approximately 20 to 24 Celsius — is a good way to start this process whereas a cold bed would inhibit sleep."

How's that for the "human touch?"

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Jordan Yerman

at 07:08 on January 26th, 2010

Can you request bed-warmers who are warmer or colder?

Karl Gotthardt - albertacowpoke

at 07:18 on January 26th, 2010

LOL , yeah how do u turn them down?

mudricky

at 13:50 on January 26th, 2010

This will win daft idear of the year!!!

Karen Hatter

at 09:01 on January 26th, 2010

This brought to mind a custom practiced during slavery; young enslaved boys, girls and women would be used as bed warmers to warm feet, as well as other body parts, usually all night, in the slaveholders' beds.

I wonder how this duty is written up in a Holiday Inn job description.

Wouldn't using an electric blanket before the guests got into bed be more efficient?

mudricky

at 12:34 on January 26th, 2010

Electric blanket is the first thing that came to mind for me... daft lol

Uwe Paschen

at 09:40 on January 26th, 2010

Hum... My grand mother used bricks she put in to the oven of her tiled wood stove. Before we went to bed all beds where warmed up. The house had no heat though other then the tile wood oven in the kitchen.

Karl Gotthardt - albertacowpoke

at 13:47 on January 26th, 2010

Heated water bottles were also the custom shortly after hostilities ended after WWII.

YankeeJim

at 10:21 on January 26th, 2010

Many times I have wondered if someone had already been there. I did not realize that was a part of the service. Someone took a bite out of my chocolate mint. I suppose that was for my benefit too.

anarkissed

at 10:42 on January 26th, 2010

No, not even if he carries his own air supply in an hermetically sealed suit. It's bad enough to know the coverlet hasn't been washed and I have to check for bed-bugs, but knowing a stranger's body heat is in my bed would just freak me out. One of the things I like about a fresh bed is that it's cold, like a cold toilet seat it implies sanitary to my mind.

Susan Marie Kovalinsky

at 12:26 on January 26th, 2010

This is all off. In the US, if you stay at a Holiday Inn in the winter, you turn the heat up, and the room is an oven. I assume it is the same in the UK. There is something vile about this whole idea, leading back to what Karen Hatter has said. It should be thrown overboard.