Jeremy Jones considers himself a seasoned hotel guest. He travels frequently for his job as a chemical engineer and toured the globe with his wife, Angie — all documented on their travel blog.  But it was during a two-night stay at the Conrad Hotel in Indianapolis that he tried something for the first time: a pillow menu.  It offered a range of pillows — different firmnesses, different shapes, all for different sleep habits. Mr. Jones settled on the water pillow, his wife, the support pillow. To their pleasant surprise, they slept well. And again the next night. When they returned home to Pittsburgh, they bought pillows similar to those they had used at the Conrad.  Pillow menus are certainly not new to the high-end hotel business. But they are just one way that hotels are increasingly catering to the quality of their guests’ sleep.  JW Marriott hotels began their Nightly Refresh Program in 2013, to help guests unwind and sleep more soundly when they arrived. The service went beyond the bed, with a mixture of aromatic oils and a selection of flavored chocolates intended to relax the body. The Peninsula Hotel in Manhattan offers handmade mattresses from Savoir Beds, a 110-year-old bedding company based in London.  Certain hotels in the Starwood chain have a menu created to help guests sleep better. The company’s headquarters in Stamford, Conn., also have concept rooms testing ideas such as lighted floor tiles for visibility at night; a smartphone-powered room system that turns on lights, the television and other items; and specialized lighting to help reset guests’ circadian rhythms after long trips.  Even outside the hotel chains, a good night’s sleep is a growing business. The Mohonk Mountain House resort in New Paltz, N.Y., a 145-year-old hideaway, has been offering a spa treatment service aimed at the sleep-deprived for three years.  The Benjamin Hotel in Manhattan has taken its slumber one step further, bringing aboard a sleep consultant two years ago. Rebecca Robbins helps advise guests on a variety of related issues, including what pillow to select and what to eat before bed.  Before Ms. Robbins’s arrival at the Benjamin, the hotel’s pillow menu was little noticed. Few guests used it and even fewer hotel employees knew how to properly match a head with the best pillow for it.  Now, Ms. Robbins, a Cornell University sleep researcher, gives biannual talks to the hotel’s staff — everyone from the general manager to the kitchen crew — on how to help create a better night’s sleep for each guest.  “Guests appreciate that members of the Benjamin team are trained and responsive to questions about the benefits of sleep,” the hotel’s general manager, Steve Sasso, said.  Now the Benjamin features several pillows, including a plush cloud pillow, a music-playing lullaby pillow and a maternity pillow, which supports the bellies of pregnant guests.  But the push for a good night’s sleep does not end there.  Services include a menu intended to help relax the body and digestive system for late-night arrivals, blackout curtains in the rooms and a new work-down call service from the front desk in which guests can be told to start wrapping things up and hitting the sack. Ms. Robbins is also available to guests for custom sleep consultations.  “That’s what hospitality is about,” said Henry Harteveldt, a travel analyst at Atmosphere Research Group. “It’s about being thoughtful and trying to anticipate and deliver on guests’ needs. Not on what you might expect, but these unanticipated, unexpected things that really do please the guest. It would be great if we saw more hotels doing something like this.”  That is where the business of better sleep in hotels seems to hit a roadblock.  Sleep amenities are offered at high-end hotels, but have yet to trickle down to where the average guest books a room.  “It’s something that I had not seen before,” said Mark Moravits, 32, who used a pillow menu during a recent stay at the Conrad Chicago hotel. “It’s a five-star place, so you sort of expect stuff like that.”  Mr. Moravits traveled up to three times a month in his previous job with a nonprofit education program and had never encountered a pillow menu, sleep consultant or any other customized service to help him get a better night’s rest. He is a loyal Starwood Hotels customer, going so far as to buy a bedspread from the company’s online store.  After staying at the Conrad and using the menu to select an aromatherapy pillow and sleeping more comfortably than in his own bed, Mr. Moravits wondered why the hotels where he usually stayed did not offer the service.  “I would love for this to be the norm,” Ms. Robbins, the sleep researcher, said. “Instead of talking about adding a gadget or the latest iPod dock or charger in the room, we should be focusing more on sleep in the hospitality industry.”  A version of this article appears in print on July 21, 2015, on page B4 of the New York edition with the headline: Hotels Make an Extra Effort to Ensure Guests a Good Night’s Sleep. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
Lullaby pillows, specialized lighting, blackout curtains and sleep consultants are among the perks being offered to promote sound slumber.