Sweet dreams for $2,000 a night: Luxury sleep tourism and how it works

At some paddleball courts, the sound of rackets can be heard until close to midnight. Many gyms and swimming pools have expanded their hours of operation, as users wake up earlier, or else want to come during times of the evening once reserved for being at home or at the pub. Streaming platforms automatically queue one episode after another of their series in an attempt to keep you hooked until the next morning. Batch cooking takes place at night, and those with complex skincare routines perform them just before bed, adding steps to a ritual that seems to get longer and longer. Though today, many jobs necessitate a graveyard shift, or to be constantly available, there are also everyday leisure activities invading moments that traditionally have been dedicated to rest.

If a few years ago the only thing that stole our sleep was the exorbitant schedule of prime time television, today, several industries compete with TV to rob the hours of our lives we once spent sleeping. “The deterioration of sleep is inseparable from the ongoing dismantlement of social protections in other areas,” says philosopher Jonathan Crary in his book 24/7: Late Capitalism and the End of Sleep.

Faced with such stimulants, in places like Spain, where cases of insomnia have tripled over the last two decades, a new sector has arisen that is focused on wellness and rest, offering restorative nights and deep slumber. A battle rages between two apparently opposite, but actually complementary forces: a push to produce and consume at all hours, and another to turn rest into a costly object of desire. Many hotels now cater to this “sleep tourism,” and have unveiled tools and treatments that allow guests to sleep a sleep they can’t find elsewhere — and to pick up some good habits along the way. The Equinox chain, for example, offers The Sleep Experience in several cities: hotel rooms solely dedicated to getting deep, quality sleep (for $2,000 a night). According to some studies, the sleep tourism industry is already generating some $6 billion a year.

Although this figure has grown in recent years, the phenomenon itself is nothing new. Some hotels in the Alps, to name one example, have long offered special beds, to which they have more recently added massage and exercise and nutrition programs. In fact, their current formula differs little from the regimen that Nietzsche took advantage of during his stay in Sils Maria, where he wrote many of his works: fresh air, silence, limited distractions and a strict protocol designed for arriving at one’s bed (or desk) in the best of dispositions. He went to the Swiss town to rest in order to write more, just as today we look to return to work with renewed vigor. “Sleep is an uncompromising break from the time theft capitalism inflicts upon us. The majority of the seemingly insurmountable needs of human life, like hunger, thirst and sexual desire, have been transformed into commercialized or financialized versions. Sleep is a human necessity and a period of time that cannot be colonized; that’s why it remains an incongruent anomaly and site of crisis,” writs Crary in his book. In 2026, it seems that this too is in flux.

The rest industry and the battle against sleep

“Resting rich face” is a viral phenomenon that has populated social media with makeup tricks to give skin a look of having enjoyed a restorative sleep or pleasurable vacations, even if the person hasn’t gotten a moment’s rest (because, of course, they’re not rich either). It’s true that social class is closely tied to access to rest, and in fact, in the novel Las buenas noches (Good nights) by Isaac Rosa, the insomniac protagonist makes a lists of tips to sleep well, with items like “Get better working conditions and a pay raise” and “don’t pay more than a third of your income on rent or the mortgage.” “In times of growing inequality, rest, and in particular, sleep, is also a matter of purchasing power and varies by neighborhood. We could cross-reference household income data with data on the use of sleep aids — and even with those sleep metrics that so many people track,” Rosa explains to EL PAÍS.

“It might seem contradictory, because while getting little sleep is associated with success, good sleep has become a luxury. It’s not really a contradiction: the flipside of the aspirational 5 a.m. club is the ability to go to bed early, and that is indeed a luxury with the reach of few. Going to bed early means getting to the end of the day without work to do and without many worries (work, home, family). Waking up earlier than everyone else and also sleeping better than everyone else are two sides of the same coin,” continues the writer, who compares sleeping problems with other markers of class like propensity to being obese and screen addiction.

Of course, bros did not invent the productive morning myth. Many intellectuals from the 19^th and 20^th centuries considered sleep a waste of time, and an irritating interruption to their treasured creative process. For example, Vladimir Nabokov wrote that “sleep is the most moronic fraternity in the world,” that “it is a mental torture I find debasing.” “No matter how great my weariness, the wrench of parting with consciousness is unspeakably repulsive to me,” he lamented. Sleep’s prestige varies by generations and even by social group. As journalist Anabel Vázquez, author and travel expert, puts it: “For one generation, saying that you’ve slept well is saying definitively to the world that your life is in order; for another generation, saying that you didn’t sleep a lot and that you still have so much work to do is still acceptable, though that concept has been losing a lot of ground.”

So it is that, as with other phenomena, at bedtime, society creates antidotes to the poison it has itself created. Rosa says, “We want to sleep (and we look for all kinds of remedies) and at the same time, we don’t want to sleep, or we want to sleep less (and we look for all kinds of remedies for that). We consume a massive number of sleeping products and products to stay awake, sleeping pills and stimulants, melatonin and caffeine, all in the same day. And it’s all to the same end: being more productive, being worth more, in the hope of monetizing it. Self-care (which has perversely occupied the space in discourse once reserved for care), is today a social and economic mandate, implying daily routines (exercise, beauty, relaxation, spirituality) that only wind up robbing hours of sleep from us.”

Vacations for better rest

Those who are convinced that what they want is to sleep more have many options, especially if they are able to pay for them. Companies like Melià and Four Seasons sell the same mattresses, pillows and sets of sheets that are used in the rooms of their establishments so that clients can have the sensation of sleeping in their hotels, even at home. “At a certain level of hospitality, a good bed is a given, though many hotels continue to make a big deal about the kind of beds that they use. It’s because rest, in the world of hotels, is a great amenity. It’s like, the ultimate amenity,” says Vázquez.

The journalist and writer has been able to try some of the sleep retreats organized by hotels nestled in scenic locations and by historic spas. “There, they give you a medical analysis and they monitor your sleep. The conclusion is often that you aren’t getting quality sleep, which is one of the great contemporary evils everyone has in common, like being sedentary and having anxiety. What these retreats promise is to design you a program that you can then carry out at home. For example, I learned at a Six Senses in Oporto the reasons why you have to sleep with an eye covering. They also gave me special, bamboo-fiber pajamas that regulate your body temperature and a few common-sense (the least common of the senses, so we usually don’t follow it) tips. Both that one and another at the SHA [a hotel in Alicante province specializing in preventive medicine] where I had my tests done were helpful. It’s not that I slept well there, but they showed me what my sleep patterns were like and gave me some guidelines. They help you, because sleep says a lot about our lives: it’s like an X-ray of who we are, and in these places, they hold a mirror up to you.”

But it’s not necessary for a stay to be focused exclusively on sleep quality for it to be an important factor during vacations or a retreat. “The rest industry is very linked to the wellness industry, which has made retreats one of its mainstays. There are all kinds of retreats, and what they all have in common is that they promise that you’re going to really rest, whether that’s because there isn’t wi-fi everywhere or because activities end really early and they advocate for getting rid of stimulants. There are retreats that focus on fertility, writing, Pilates, silence, and so on. And really, when you see someone go to one of these places, what they’re looking for is an excuse to escape from their lives for a few days,” says Vázquez. That satisfactory rest has become something we only associate with being at a retreat or on a perfectly planned vacation might be seen as an alarming sign. “Effectively, to be able to rest, you have to have a lot of basic necessities resolved, unfortunately. Rest, like housing, which are basic rights, have become absolute privileges in reach of few,” sighs the journalist.

In addition, Rosa is clear that “almost all remedies share one thing in common: they work for a while, and then you have to increase the dose or try something stronger, because the causes of resting poorly have not been addressed.” The writer, who spoke with many insomniacs and people who don’t sleep well in preparation for writing his novel, says that, though it might sound drastic, we sleep poorly because we live poorly. “To sleep well, you need a good life. Un’altra vita, as the Franco Battiato song goes, where he sings that every day, ‘in the afternoon, I come home with a special problem’ and ‘tranquilizers and treatments don’t work’”. It would seem that if you can’t make a change to your days, you won’t be able to change your nights.

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