Whether you’re traveling for business or pleasure, getting good sleep is key to having enough energy to power through your days away from home. So book a hotel that has a room with a great bed waiting for you. These days, hotels know that quality slumber is important to travelers, so many of them have created luxury bedding for guests. These, below, are among the best and worth checking out!This chain was the first to create a signature bed in 1999, in partnership with the mattress manufacturer Simmons, and its quality has stood the test of time. It boasts a 13-inch pillow-top mattress that’s enveloped in 250-thread count sheets. Two feather and down pillows and two hypo-allergenic pillows perch on top, along with a boudoir pillow, an overstuffed duvet, and a down blanket. If you fall in love with the beds, they are even available for purchase on the hotel’s ecommerce site.When you check in to this luxury hotel chain, you get to customize your bed. You can pick from three different mattress toppers—signature, the standard topper;
plush, the extra soft option; or firm, the most supportive. What’s more, each version has a foam center that absorbs heat (to keep you cool as you sleep), as well as a coil system that helps minimize motion transfer when you’re snoozing with a partner.This chain, a sister to the Westin, has a hip, upscale reputation—and, like its sister hotels, some of the best beds on the road. (They’re nicknamed “The Do Not Disturb Mattresses.”) Rooms are furnished with the W Plush Top Mattress, a 13-inch thick luxury that encases over one thousand coils for ultimate comfort. For an added touch of luxe, many Ws add cashmere throws and downy pillows to the bed. The W bed, as well as all of the bedding that’s found in its hotel rooms, can be purchased as well.The Hilton company partners with Serta to create a bed that gives you, as the chain calls it, “The Hilton Bed Goodnight.” The bed’s quilted, plush top may improve circulation and even reduce restlessness at night. Plus, it’s got plenty of coil support and reinforcement at the edges.
If you’re taken with the Hilton Bed, you can bring one into your own bedroom by purchasing it on Hilton’s website.Called The Marriott Bed, this chain’s proprietary mattress is one-foot high from top to bottom (plus, there’s a nine-inch box spring underneath). Made of “high-density, open-cell poured polyurethane foam,” it helps minimize movement from your partner, so you can sleep the night through without disturbances. And, of course, you can bring it home with you by purchasing it on the company’s website.Many hotels in this chain boast select rooms with Sleep Number beds, which allow you to choose your own level of firmness. Even better: Each side of the bed can be dialed in for different levels of softness, so you and your partner can each get an ideal night’s slumber without having to strike a compromise.This ultra-upscale retreat, part of the Marriott family, has equally plush beds: Their Ritz-Carlton Beds are made with special coil technology and foam that keeps you cool while you sleep, and they sit atop an environmentally-responsible, sturdy base.
Finished with removable featherbed toppers, many beds boast 800-thread count cotton sheets. And don’t worry—you can bring the Ritz-Carton Bed experience home by purchasing the bed for your own bedroom.Bargain Hunt is a unique and growing retail chain of 64 stores headquartered in La Vergne, Tennessee. Bargain Hunt offers customers quality brand name merchandise 30% to 50% below normal retail pricing. At Bargain Hunt expect to find brand name clothing for men, women and children; the latest and greatest electronics and TVs; a huge selection of home furnishings; toys, bikes, sporting goods and outdoor gear; indoor and outdoor furniture; and many more exciting highly discounted items. Our unique and constantly changing product selection makes for an extremely fun shopping experience. We are focused on growing our already strong presence in the Midwest and Southeast. Currently, Bargain Hunt has stores in Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia, Alabama, Indiana, Ohio, Mississippi, North Carolina and South Carolina.
Operating out of this tight geographic region allows us the competitive advantage of providing fresh, new merchandise selections to our customers two or three times during most weeks. Our business model is ever evolving to meet our customers' needs and expectations. In 2016 we opened 20 new Bargain Hunt Stores and will continue to expand our store network in 2017 with 30 or more new locations to better serve our growing customer base. Please explore our website further as we are sure that you will enjoy participating in "the hunt".Starved for a good night's sleep? If you live in Vernon Hills, you're in luck. Clustered around the intersection of Milwaukee Avenue and Townline Road are no fewer than 16 stores selling mattresses.You won't do badly in west suburban Geneva, where Mattress Firm, Walter E. Smithe and American Mattress all stand side by side on a busy stretch of Randall Road. How convenient: rival mattress merchants sharing the same parking lot. And along Clybourn Avenue in Lincoln Park, Mattress Firm has five locations, including two across the street from each other.
Within the shrinking world of brick-and-mortar retail, with national names such as Office Depot virtually gone and Sports Authority in bankruptcy, the bedding category has distinguished itself as a robust survivor. From chain stores and department stores to furniture outlets such as Art Van and Ashley, bedroom-shopping options are everywhere.But this sector may not be robust for long. The two biggest chains—Mattress Firm and Sleepy's—merged last month in a $780 million deal. Real estate sources say Houston-based Mattress Firm is planning to close 60 to 80 of its 230 post-merger locations in metro Chicago within the next year to maximize profit.Meantime, these stores are under attack from the Internet. Upstarts such as Tuft & Needle and Leesa are taking market share, thanks to convenience—their foam mattresses are squeezed into smallish containers and shipped free—and relatively low prices—a king-size mattress from Casper, for instance, retails for $950. Furniture Today magazine estimates that at least 1 in every 20 mattresses today is sold online.
Experts are predicting that e-commerce could account for 20 percent of the mattress category, estimated at $13 billion in 2015, within a few years.“There are dozens and dozens of vendors online at Amazon now promoting mattresses,” says Ryan Trainer, president of the International Sleep Products Association in Alexandria, Va. “My daughter is 20 years old. Online is how she would buy a mattress. This is a blossoming channel right now.” Mattress-makers are taking note. This month Tempur Sealy announced a collection called Cocoon sold only online, setting the Lexington, Ky.-based company up to compete against stores already selling the rest of its products.“There are thousands and thousands of specialty stores selling mattresses around the U.S., but there is no reason to maintain such an expensive real estate footprint,” says Philip Krim, co-founder and CEO of Casper, launched only two years ago but already the e-commerce leader after three rounds of venture funding. “This industry has a lot of old legacy costs and thinking that have to go.
They haven't kept up with the times.”With its takeover of Hicksville, N.Y.-based Sleepy's and its 1,050 locations, Mattress Firm now stands as a national colossus with about 3,500 stores and annual revenue of $3.6 billion. (In 2014, Mattress Firm acquired the locally prominent Back to Bed and Bedding Experts chains.) Michael Sullivan, Mattress Firm's regional director of sales, acknowledges that some of these stores are too close together but rejects the idea of shuttering 60 to 80 stores. Some locations might be converted to a subbrand, Mattress Final Markdown, selling clearance products, he says. Others may become a bed-in-a-box line of its own called Dream Bed, which is being tested in Chicago.Daniel Hofkin, an analyst at William Blair in Chicago, estimates that Mattress Firm lost money here in the first half of 2015. “Then in the second half, they began running advertising here and business picked up,” he says. He expects the retailer, whose stock price has been slumping, to make more acquisitions.
Art Van Furniture from Detroit, which recently opened its 11th store in the Chicago market, expects to begin building its adjunct mattress-only concept, called PureSleep, in a big way soon. “We expect to have 11 PureSleep stores here in a year, but first I want to wait and see which stores Mattress Firm decides to close,” says David Van Elslander, PureSleep's president.In Glenview, Abt Electronics devotes 4,500 square feet to mattresses—a little smaller than the average Sleepy's store—with some priced above $4,000. Geoff Imhof, Abt's general manager, predicts that Mattress Firm will drive independent bedding merchants, once common here, further to the margins. “Not many small-time retailers are left,” he says. “They'll have a tough time competing in the future.”One of the little guys is Ray Westman, franchise owner of three Verlo shops in the northwest suburbs. He says sales were up by double digits last year. “We build our own mattresses ourselves right here on the premises,” Westman says from his McHenry shop.