Travelling can be a tiring experience, when you’re spending your days wandering around new towns, flying from country to country, or even just driving to a new location you can feel like your energy has been sapped.
So, it is important that when you’re traveling, you can get the rest your body needs so that you can enjoy your trip as much as possible. Before you even leave for your trip, it’s important that you factor in sleep when you’re still in the planning stage.
Sure, you may think that any hotel will do, but if you’re going to be active, you’ll want to ensure that you’re getting the best sleep possible whilst you’re traveling.
So, you should closely look at the hotels you may stay in and have a hotel checklist of what features your room will need for you to have an enjoyable stay and keep refreshed to help minimise sleep disruption.
Read on, as we’ve put together a hotel checklist for certain features you should keep an eye out for when booking hotels for your travels.
Blackout Blinds
Firstly, we have one of the most important features you should look for when booking a hotel, blackout blinds. Blackout blinds are special blinds that will block out all incoming light from the outside world, to ensure that your bedroom is nice and dark for when you sleep.
While it seems like a simple feature, not every hotel room will come with blackout blinds. If your hotel checklist is in an urban area, or if you need to sleep at odd times due to jetlag, not having blackout blinds will lead to you struggling to get the sleep you need to properly enjoy your travels.
Comfortable Bedding
For a good night’s sleep, comfort is important. So, you should make sure that the hotel you stay in has high-quality bed linens, pillows, and mattresses so that you can be as comfortable as possible.
When your body desperately needs sleep, there’s no worse feeling than tossing and turning on an uncomfortable mattress. So, when you’re looking at hotels, see if they have any details about their beds and bed linens, if not you can always call the hotel and ask them yourself.
It may seem like this is a bit too much work, but your body will thank you when you jump into that comfortable bed at the end of a long day.
Private Bathroom Area
While it’s standard to have a private bathroom in most western or star-rated hotels, private bathrooms are not always present in hotels, especially if you’re traveling to a developing country or booking a low-cost hotel room.
So before booking make sure your hotel room will have a private bathroom. You’ll want your own private bathroom for a myriad of reasons, but for sleep-related reasons, you’ll want to have a relaxing bath or shower before getting into bed.
As well, needing to use a shared bathroom at night if you wake up needing to use the toilet will likely wake you up. Whereas with a private bathroom, you can stumble in, do your business, and then hop back into bed in a jiffy.
Relaxation Facilities
While these aren’t a necessity, it is still ideal to have some sort of relaxation facility in the hotel checklist you’ll be staying at. Whether it’s a small spa, some relaxation rooms, or even just a massage chair in the lobby.
It pays dividends to be relaxed come bedtime. So, if you can afford to, you should look for a hotel which can provide some sort of relaxation for you.
If you’re traveling for business, these relaxation facilities will be even more worthwhile, allowing you to shake off the stress of your busy business trip and unwind a bit before getting into bed.
Work-related stress is one of the biggest factors in getting poor sleep, so a quick relaxation session at the end of the day will help you get the sleep you need.
In-Room Drinks Facilities
When you settle down for sleep in the evening, you don’t really want to leave your hotel room. Venturing out from your room will result in you feeling more awake, so really you want to be able to fulfill all your needs from inside your room.
One of the biggest needs your room should fulfill is the ability to grab a drink, in the UK drinks making facilities in the form of a drinking water tap, kettle, and tea and coffee essentials are very common, but not always as common elsewhere.
So, make sure you will have the ability to at least grab a glass of drinking water in your bedroom, so a dry mouth at midnight doesn’t end up with you feeling awake at 1 am.
Temperature Control
Getting the temperature right is important for a good night’s sleep: if your room is too warm, you’ll be up all night sweating and feeling uncomfortable; or if your room is too cold, you’ll find yourself wrapped up tight under the duvet shivering yourself to sleep. So, temperature control is important.
You’ll want to ensure your hotel room has some sort of temperature control. In warmer countries, you’ll want to make sure your hotel room has an air conditioning unit to keep you cool, or in a colder country.
You’ll want a radiator and thermostat to help keep you nice and warm. To get the best sleep possible, you must ensure your hotel room has the needed temperature control.
Quiet Location
Getting a hotel room, right in the middle of whatever city you’re traveling to may seem like a good idea at first, you’re close to all the action and activities of the place you’re staying and can walk out of your hotel room to explore. But central city locations can be noisy which is a big drawback. Hotels around Fort Jackson South Carolina are on amazing locations and they include all of the features you could possibly imagine but mostly important they are on good locations.
All the positives of staying in a central location go out of the window as soon as you realize your sleep will be disrupted by the noises of traffic and loud pedestrians.
So, when booking, you’ll want to find a hotel that is in a quieter location on the outskirts of the city or in a low-traffic location inside the city. The difference in the quality of sleep is more than enough to justify taking a bit longer to get into the city to explore.
There you have it, a simple and easy-to-follow hotel checklist of things you should make sure your hotel will have before you travel.
Getting the sleep you need will make your travels much more enjoyable as you will have the energy required to get the most out of the experience. So, sleep well and enjoy your travels!
Also Read:
Top 4 reasons why short-term rental houses are better than hotels
How To Choose The Best Hotel: 10 Things To Consider When Choosing Hotel For Your Trip
