I Have Insomnia—So I Tried Sleep Tourism to See if It Could Help

Unpacked by AFAR

Would you travel for a better night’s sleep? Sleep packages at luxury hotels ranging from menus with sleep-promoting ingredients to hypnotherapy sessions promise to promote better sleep, both during and after your stay.

In this episode of Unpacked, contributing writer Chris Colin travels to four different “sleep hotels” to find a cure for his own insomnia and discover what our sleep issues–and solutions–reveal about our collective psyche.

Does Sleep Tourism Work?

In this episode you’ll learn:

• Handy sleep pointers for the traveler.
• The unique amenities that “sleep hotels,”offer: from reiki to CBD and sleep masks.
• What people do when they can’t sleep and how our sleep solutions reflect society.

A Quest for Better Rest

Don’t miss these moments:

[10:51] “Go to sleep, dream”: Hypnotherapy at Carmel Valley Ranch

[18:20] What’s a hyperbaric chamber? The unique sleep offerings at Stanly Ranch.

[24:11] Sleep Doctor, Michael Breus, teams up with The Post Ranch Inn.

Insomniacs and Sleep Doctors Tell All

In this episode, you’ll hear from yoga instructors, meditation guides, sleep doctors, hypnotherapists and a handful of insomniacs to get to the bottom of the rise in sleep travel.

Chris Colin sets out on a quest to discover if sleep tourism actually provides better rest and what our lack of sleep (and our attempted solutions) say about society as a whole.

Resources:

• Read the full transcript of the episode.
• Explore Chris’s website.
• Check out the sleep programs at the hotels Chris mentions in the episode: the Kimpton Alton, Carmel Valley Ranch, Stanly Ranch, and the Post Ranch Inn.
• Read Chris’s stories for afar.com and explore his website.
• Listen to Chris’s podcast Longer Tables With José Andrés.

Be sure to subscribe to the show and to sign up for our podcast newsletter, Behind the Mic, where we share upcoming news and behind-the-scenes details of each episode.

And explore our second podcast, Travel Tales, which celebrates first-person narratives about the way travel changes us.