Morning wake-up calls have been a staple at hotels since the early 1900s. Now, City Lodge Hotels is pioneering its own brand of nocturnal hospitality, with Bedtime Stories for Business People. Anxious travellers tossing and turning the night before a dreaded conference or pitch have recourse to a witty repertoire of bespoke tales – funny, nuanced audible narratives with genuinely relaxing properties.
City Lodge Hotels takes pride in the reliably stellar quality of our hotel rooms and amenities. But we also know that deliciously downy duvets aren’t always enough to ensure that our guests can rest easy at night.
It doesn’t matter if our mattresses are lush enough to be your personal, horizontal havens; it doesn’t matter how many creature comforts you have at your disposal. Business travel is just intrinsically hard. It’s disruptive. It’s awkward. It’s high-stakes, high-pressure, hyper-social – and it requires you to show up as your best professional self in alien spaces.
According to Harvard Business Review, 75% of business travellers report high stress levels. BCD Travel reports that only 25% of business travellers manage to sleep well. There’s no question that our career-driven guests are losing sleep, the night (or nights) before showtime.
Any hotel worthy of the name offers a complimentary wake-up call: that knock on the door or shrill of the phone is our guarantee that we’ll get you up and at it in time, regardless of how poorly you may have slept the night before.
But City Lodge Hotels delights in going the extra mile for our guests, be they beleaguered bosses-in-transit, hassled HR heroes, or insomniac sales reps. That’s why we’ve developed a one-of-a-kind correlation to the trusty wake-up call: the night to its daily grind.
Introducing Bedtime Stories for Business People: tongue-in-cheek tales written just for weary professionals like you. Our stories are designed to induce sleep, in the same way as most relaxing audio apps – but it wouldn’t be City Lodge Hotels if our tales were totally in earnest. Instead, each Bedtime Story takes an amusing view of life, typical of our off-beat sense of humour.
A collaboration with our long-term creative partner, agency TBWA/Hunt/Lascaris, Bedtime Stories for Business People are wry, uplifting, and address several classic office archetypes – Middle Management, HR, and that infamous character from the Procurement Department included. Should you prefer the somewhat muffled hum of white noise, we have that too.
Beautiful, intricate animations accompany each Bedtime Story, offsetting their humour to keep listeners rapt in a rhythmic trance. It’s as easy as scanning a QR code on your phone or tablet – or visiting our site via your laptop – and restless guests are transported to a menu of tracks to audit and explore. There’s a dry naughtiness, a levity embedded in each story, which speaks to the trials of working life. Our Bedtime Stories are our way of easing the tremendous pressure business travellers endure: they’re our contribution to feeling at home, away from home, with the playful panache people have come to expect from City Lodge Hotels and TBWA/Hunt Lascaris.
Work is hard. Dial into easy, with Bedtime Stories for Business People.
Click here to listen: www.bedtimestories.co.za
