The Crowne Plaza knows you just can’t take it any snore. (Sorry.) To thwart loud spouses and log-sawing guests, the international chain is trialing “snore absorption rooms” and “snore monitors.”
The press release announcing the snore absorption rooms has the rather ominous, borderline-aggressive title of “Silencing Snorers Once and For All.” Half of couples, they say, lose between one and five hours of sleep per night due to that ghastly subconscious snorting. And, they go on, three in 10 couples have come “close to splitting up” because of snoring. (And to think Huma Abedin is sticking it out.)
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The InterContinental Hotels Group then presents a remedy, at least for vacations: sleeping in a room that looks like the inside of a giant egg carton. This effect is the result of myriad technologies: sound-proofed walls, a sound-absorbing head board, an” anti-snoring bed wedge” (which sounds kind of like a lumbar support you can’t get rid of), and an anti-snoring pillow. To top it off, there’s a white-noise machine.
But sometimes the noise isn’t coming from a loved one but rather an inconvenient stranger. This is where the “snore monitors” come in. Employees, who must get yelled at a lot, patrol “quiet zones.” If a guest is sleeping too loudly, he or she is awoken and reprimanded. If the guest becomes a repeat offender, the clearly un-quiet individual will be asked to stay out of the quiet zone for the next stay.
The snore-proofed rooms are currently being tested at 10 hotels in Europe and the Middle East, while the sleep police are walking the halls of hotels in the United Kingdom. But if the trial is successful, perhaps patrons will soon enjoy some extra quiet at some of the Crowne Plaza’s 204 hotels in the Americas. (via Reuters)
Katy Steinmetz is a reporter at TIME. Find her on Twitter at @KatySteinmetz. You can also continue the discussion on TIME’s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.