Human bed-warming service pilots at Holiday Inn

Posted on: 21/01/2010

holiday-inn The All-In-One craze continues grow as "The Holiday Inn" get on board with The All In One Company. The news story hit the national press yesterday and today it appears to be an international story in USA and beyond. If you're disturbed by the rather abnormal notion of having a total stranger warm your hotel bed for you by laying in it, by all means pass this story by. The Holiday Inn, which operates over 4,000 hotels worldwide, will offer a "human bed-warming service" for the next week to help keep guests stay warm inside, whilst it gets colder outside. This literally involves employees laying in your bed for five minutes before you get in. Once your sheets are suitably warm, they climb out and you climb in. I didn't quite have the nerve to ask Holiday Inn whether you could pay to have them hold you through the particularly frosty nights. After all, if you're going to replace a hot water bottle, you might as well do it properly. Each human bed-warmer wears -- and I'm not making this up, I promise -- special "toasting suits", which are essentially dressing gowns which profess to maximise sheet-heating efficiency. The complimentary service will operate as a trial in London's Kensington Forum Holiday Inn, and must be booked for nights between 18 and 25 January, for sheet-toasting sessions between 9 and 11pm. Assuming the trial is a not-at-all-creepy-in-the-slightest success, maybe you'll see strangers in your hotel bed country-wide later this year.