A Hotel That Reaches Out to Those in Need of Sleep

Droopy-lidded natives proclaim that New York is the city that never sleeps. So there would seem to be little demand for a special position of sleep concierge, a hotel version of Mr. Sandman.

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But then there are the out-of-towners, the jet-lagged business executives and the bright-lights-big-city vacationers for whom New York is a robber of rest.

The Benjamin Hotel in Midtown Manhattan helped invent the position of sleep concierge nearly seven years ago when its concierge staff noticed that more and more of their guest questions involved sleep. It is one of only a few hotels to offer the service, with the Fairmont in Washington and the SoHo Metropolitan Hotel in Toronto offering similar services.

Steps away from the No. 6 subway train and Lexington Avenue in full havoc, the Benjamin has deployed an array of anti-insomnia weapons.

They include guest rooms that begin on the fifth floor, high above street noise, with soundproof windows; luxury sheets; aromatherapy; massages; satin sleep masks; tips for "executive" naps; a menu of 11 special pillows, including the "Snore-No-More"; and special sleep-inducing foods, like banana bread with peanut butter.

The hotel, at 50th Street and Lexington, has a guarantee, said the sleep concierge, Anya Orlanska, who speaks with a slight Polish accent.

"You must sleep well or you will get money back," she said.

Jennifer King, a technology consultant originally from Chicago, stayed at the Benjamin Hotel last month. She did so because Ms. Orlanska had done a deft job of finding a good hairdresser for Ms. King's mother when Ms. Orlanska was the concierge at the New York Palace Hotel.

Ms. King noticed the pillow menu and other offerings, but, she said, "I didn't think it was going to be that big of a deal."

A sufferer of back pain, Ms. King said she had never been able to sleep for more than three hours a night without getting up.

But with a firm mattress and a special pillow - the "Swedish Memory," with self-molding foam developed by NASA - she was able to sleep for eight hours, she said. "And this was during the United Nations General Assembly and police escorts and traffic and people all around," Ms. King said. "I couldn't believe it."

Lucky for the Benjamin that Ms. King's visit was so restful. Her seven-night stay cost more than ,000.

The Four Seasons offered a "teen concierge" over the summer ("to provide teen-savvy advice on what's hot in our city"). The Ritz-Carlton in Battery Park once had a water sommelier who offered advice on more than 30 waters, none of them tap. (The post was later terminated for lack of interest.)

At the Benjamin, Ms. Orlanska, 37, the hotel's senior concierge, said she advises dozens of guests a day on their sleep. She and the three other Benjamin concierges are trained in the sleep program, and spend the majority of their time dealing with sleep issues, while also doing the usual concierge duties like finding theater tickets to "Mary Poppins."

Three days before a guest is scheduled to arrive, the staff advises him or her of the pillow menu so that the pillow will be in the room when the guest arrives. The program is constantly expanding. A new iPod pillow plays music in the pillow itself.

Most of the pillows shift the body, usually on the side. The "Snore-No-More" elevates the chin. The maternity pillow eases stress on the abdomen.

Ms. Orlanska said she must often play psychiatrist to identify the causes of stress, like back-to-back meetings. A tip sheet, "Take an Executive Nap," which advises that a 60-minute nap is better than a 30-minute nap, usually does the trick. She'll also resort to banana bread.

Only one guest actually collected on the hotel's guarantee, said Eileen McGill, who was a concierge at the Benjamin for more than six years. Consolidated Edison was jackhammering one night, said Ms. McGill, now the senior concierge at Manhattan House, a condominium complex on the Upper East Side.

"We gave him his money back," she said, even though he was only one out of several hundred guests who complained.

A third of Americans suffer from insomnia, according to the Institute of Sleep Medicine in Houston, and the most common sleep disorder is sleep apnea, characterized by repeated pauses in breathing during sleep. Such apnea often leads to high blood pressure, which raises the risk of heart failure and stroke.

Sleep itself remains a mystery, said Eric Bell, a clinical psychologist at the institute. Sleep probably restores the body in some way, he said. While sleep deprivation is regarded as a form of torture, he said, there is no evidence that anyone has died from lack of sleep.

Jet lag is a disorder in the timing of sleep, Mr. Bell said, and various sleep remedies, like special pillows, white-noise machines and tea can ease sufferers into sleep. But he is not surprised that the job of sleep concierge has not spread to many hotels.

"Everybody used to believe old wives' tales as to what sleep is and what it isn't," he said. "It's taken many years for people to get used to the idea that" sleep remedies can be very useful.

As for Ms. Orlanska, she said she has always been mindful of sleep. The daughter of a farmer and a flower-shop owner in her native Poland, Ms. Orlanska used to get up at dawn as a college student in Krakow to study her textbooks on a park bench.

"It was the calmest time of the day," she said.

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