A nightmare on your street – Millbrook Contract Beds talks about nightmares

Dreams are complex little mysteries. They have the power to surprise us, make us happy and fulfil our fantasies. But where there are dreams, there are often nightmares lurking around the corner. Nightmares are terrifying dreams that cause our hearts to race; even after you wake up and realise that it was all a dream, your heart continues to pound and the fear stays with you in the darkness of the bedroom. Millbrook Contract Beds is fascinated with every aspect of dreaming, especially nightmares. They’re fascinating things. Continue reading »

Making your guests comfortable this summer…

If you’re a hotel owner you’re no doubt bracing yourself for the summer months.  Aside from being a busy time of year you will see an influx of people staying at your establishment and hopefully putting their heads down for a night or two in your contract beds!

However, with the glorious summer comes a bit of an issue for a lot of hoteliers and that’s the lighter evenings.  While we all remember the misery of dark evenings and cold mornings in the winter time, when summer finally comes, the sun doesn’t go down until past 9pm and it rises much earlier in the morning.

This can be a real issue for light sleepers – and all the best contract beds in the world won’t help someone with sensitivity to light!

Continue reading »

Save money this June with Millbrook Contract Beds

We all like to save money.  In fact, many people and especially businesses spend each and every day looking for profit margins just to make they are maximised where they can be. However, for hoteliers while you may be able to save money on portion sizing and the ingredients used to create them, your contract beds are a different matter.

Usually any refurbishment takes place in the winter time, the logic being that there are less guests to worry about and therefore it’s more convenient. But is this the best time to think about replacing contract beds?

In today’s blog, Millbrook Contract Beds looks at how you might save money by doing things a slightly different way this year!

Firstly, you will save money buying direct from a manufacturer, because the ‘middle-man’ costs are much less.  So if your current supplier stocks beds made by a manufacturer, you can bet that if you can buy direct instead, you’ll save pounds on the purchase price, helping you keep your budgets much lower.

Secondly, if you are a savvy buyer, you should look for sales!  These usually come up in the early part of the year and over the summer months – so while you’re buying at your own peak season you could actually save quite a bit with very little inconvenience buying at the ‘wrong’ time of year.

Remember, a contract bed supplier will deliver and if arranged, remove any old beds.  So as long as you have some space to co-ordinate this you can buy now and save, with very little impact to the day-to-day running of your hotel business.

We offer periodic discounts throughout the year and in fact we have a sale on throughout June that offers you 10% off the price of contract beds across our entire range.  So even if you don’t replace every single one you have, buying your most luxurious ones now could really save you a lot of money, which can perhaps be spent on other things instead.

Having good contract beds is an important factor when making sure your guests are happy and sleeping well when they stay with you.  It can also help you when it comes to the world of online feedback – which as we are all aware is very prevalent in the world of the hotels today!

Why not take a look at our range now and see how much you could save buying now – just before your really big summer holiday season kicks in!

Our sale runs right until the end of June, so you’ve got a bit of time yet!

Simple steps to better sleep for your guests

If you’re looking for ways to improve your guest’s hotel experience then considering changing of your contract beds isn’t a bad idea, along with some other basic changes. If you do this, you could see better business, better reviews and much happier clients!

In today’s blog Millbrook Contract Beds is going to look at a few general points that you may want to consider in keeping those guests happy while promoting comfort to them when they sleep.

Continue reading »

How to impress your hotel guests

When it comes to your hotel rooms, what is it exactly that your guests consider ‘impressive’?

Is it the TV, the lighting?  Perhaps it’s the coffee you provide?  Well actually it’s more likely to be the contract bed.  This humble yet essential sleeping partner is the most important thing for helping your hotel guests to recover from their day. Yet, while this part of the hotel experience is so important, it’s amazing how many hotel owners don’t really worry too much about their contract beds! They are either new or need replacing and that’s about it.

Continue reading »

Doubles are the new singles when it comes to contract beds

If trends are to be believed, it could be time to start thinking about replacing your single contract beds with double ones!

The Sleep Council has recently suggested that more and more people in the UK are now opting for double beds even though they may well be single!  In fact, sales of single beds to the consumer markets have gone down by nine per cent within the last four years, while sales of double beds are on the increase.

While this may seem a bit of a surprise it could actually work out quite well for savvy hoteliers that choose to cater more widely for this now and in the future. After all, everyone enjoys a lot of room when they sleep and even children tend to sleep better when they aren’t crammed into a single bed for the night.

The irony perhaps is that people who sleep alone do so much better in a double bed and therefore any hotelier that has a single room, could benefit from replacing the single contract bed with a double for two reasons.   First off, with a single traveller, if they do get to enjoy a double bed they will sleep better and hopefully affirm a positive experience staying with you.  Equally, you will never have the issue again of worrying about not being able to accommodate for couples during the busy season if you’ve only got a single room with a single bed.

We all know that many hotels do give double rooms to single travellers when they have them free, so why not the other way around?

According to the Sleep Council there are some specific reasons that larger beds are better too:

• Studies within ergonomics have shown that couples sleep better in a larger bed

• A bigger bed results in better sleep because there is less disturbance from a partner during the night.

• We are actually a lot bigger than we used to be!  That means average heights have gone up as well as average size!

All very interesting findings really you might say and maybe the perfect excuse to start looking at your contract beds and their size!

If you’re looking to provide a really special sleep experience to your guests then make sure you choose Millbrook Contract Beds and the good news is we do King Size and Queen Size too!

Millbrook Contract Beds covers the latest hotel industry trends!

We spend a considerable amount of time with hoteliers providing contract beds and you could say this means that we equally spend a lot of time understanding what’s going on in the industry.  After all, we probably interact with it on a daily basis.

Additionally, because of our range of clients that run everything from small boutique hotels or B&Bs to large hotel chains, we gain a lot of insight into what’s happening within the travel industry and what our clients are seeing happen over time.

Continue reading »

Testwood School gets going on our mattress ticking!

Something a little bit different from Millbrook Contract Beds

Here at Millbrook Contract Beds we do like to try and support our community as best we can. So today we’re very pleased to share a little story with you here on our blog.

As you can imagine, on occasion we do have bits and pieces available, which we use for making mattresses and so on.  Sometimes we cannot use these things and so they need a new home if we can find them one.  Recently, we had some mattress ticking that was no longer required and therefore gave it to a variety of local Southampton based schools, including the Testwood School.

When funds are tight every little helps and by giving the mattress ticking away we were helping the planet by recycling.

So students at Testwood School got the glorious delivery of our mattress ticking, along with a few others and are currently using the mattress ticking in a variety of projects.

Very often schools have a limited budget to buy things like fabric or indeed it is the students and their parents who have to try and pay for materials, so we’re really pleased to be able to help ease some of the financial strain!

Amazingly they put their creative talents to work and created what are some amazing things, using some of the mattress ticking and we wanted to share those creations right here on our blog!

It is stunning what can be created with a little bit of inspiration, creativity and hard-work, so well done to Testwood and a big thank you for sending over some of your creations for us to see.

It’s wonderful to see our mattress ticking has gone to good use!

Sleep tourism is on the rise

Have you heard about sleep tourism? It’s the latest trend in tourism and travel right now. It sounds strange but it really is a genuine concept. Millbrook Contract Beds investigates this unusual craze.

Right now, all around the world there are hotels, spas and accommodations that are designed to act as sleepaways for sleep-deprived clientele. Insomnia and sleep deprivation problems afflict many people around the world and many of these “sleep experience accommodations” cater specifically to those who have difficulty drifting off to the land of nod.

Some of the getaways have added extras such as private consultations with sleep experts, aromatherapy treatments and massage therapies. It’s pretty innovative thinking. In addition to these optional extras many of these sleep tourist hotspots offer sleep-deprived clientele pillow menus.

Specialist hotels provide light and sound systems designed to help guests fall asleep and stay asleep plus zero gravity chairs or massage beds to snooze in. Count in the development of snore absorption rooms that literally do absorb the sound of snoring and you’ve got yourself a new emerging part of the tourism industry!

Catering to the sleep needs and the sleep problems of travellers seems to be on the rise, and we here at Millbrook Contract Beds think this can only be a good thing.

With the development of many new technologies and innovative ideas related to the world of sleep it appears that the ability to achieve a better, deeper, more satisfying sleep is open to everyone, or at least soon will be. At the moment, sleep tourism caters to people who can afford to spend on mega-impressive hotels with advanced facilities and amenities. Enough time needs to pass in order to bring these new sleep assistance technologies down to a more amicable price and to a more open market so that we all may experience sleep tourism.

In the meantime, there really is no reason why people and businesses cannot adopt the ideas of sleep tourism for their own purposes and benefits. Creating relaxing environments where sleep can be optimised really is what we’re all about at Millbrook once you get to the very heart of it.

As an individual you can create your own DIY sleep holiday that requires zero packing and zero expense. Unplug from the technologies already in your life such as phones, computers, internet, television, tablets etc. These devices have gone from being lounge-bound items (or for use outside the home) and somehow we have brought them into our bedrooms where the only real purpose of a bedroom should be to sleep! Unplug yourself from this world for an evening. Take the time to turn your bedroom into a more relaxing, open and de-cluttered space. We have written many blogs on how to achieve this before.

For hoteliers, you too can offer a slice of the sleep tourism experience by offering more from your contract beds and contract bed choices and sleep paraphernalia available. You don’t have to be a hotel of the future in order to offer your guests maximum comfort.

Sleep tourism is only growing bigger and more popular. This is the beginning of a new form of tourism altogether and while it is very specific and, arguably, strange, it seems like it is going to be a facet of the hospitality industry that’s here to stay.

Top Tips for hoteliers to reduce allergens in hotel rooms & attract more guests.

Well we’re at that time of year again where allergies can become a bit of a problem for your hotel guests. Whether it’s a pollen allergy or dust, keeping people happy when they are at your hotel and sleeping is an important thing to sort and certainly should form part of your service level plans.  So in today’s blog, Millbrook Contract Beds has some good advice for hoteliers everywhere!

Guests who are prone to issues with allergies are actually more common that you may imagine. It has been suggested that there are actually a staggering three hundred million people worldwide who suffer from some kind of allergy, with some experts suggesting this will increase over time. With this in mind it is difficult to understand why hotels and guest houses are not actually addressing this problem fully.

Continue reading »