If you check into one of the 300 Travelodge's around Britian and need a towel late at night, you don't have to call housekeeping, just go to the front desk.
They'll have lots of them -- that's because having towels on hand is one of the new training tips to help staff deal with the 70% increase in sleepwalking naked men who stay at Travelodge.
"We have seen an increased number of cases over the years so it is important that our staff know how to help sleepwalking when it arises," Leigh McCarron, the chain's sleep director, said in a statement.
One tip in the company's newly released "sleepwalkers guide" tells staff to keep towels handy at the front desk in case a customer's dignity needs preserving.
The company said naked wanderers often ask receptionists such questions as "Where's the bathroom?," "Do you have a newspaper?" or "Can I check out, I'm late for work?"
Studies have found that sleepwalking can be brought on by stress, alcohol, eating cheese or consuming too much caffeine. It generally takes effect an hour or two after going to bed, when people are first slipping into a deep sleep. Asked Thursday why she thought 95 percent of its sleepwalkers were naked men, a Travelodge spokeswoman said: "We have more men staying with us than women, so that could be a factor."
So here's what I've learned: a lot of men in Britain sleep au natural and they shouldn't eat pizza on business trips.
The number of naked males sleepers is very surprising and in direct conflict with the findings of some research reported in Psychology Today .That research ,which compares male/female behavior,found that
17% of men sleep in the nude while 83% of women say they sleep in the nude.
The study also looked at how many people clean their belly buttons every day so I am sure it meets the highest academic standards.
Some of the headlines for this story:
Travelodge Pulls the Covers Of Naked Sleepwalking Trend
Nearly Naked & Nude Sleepwalkers
Travelodge and the plague of naked sleepwalkers
Some of the observations of bloggers:
From Changing Places: "I asume they just let the naked women sleepwalkers continue wandering around, then?
From Lost Weekend "Perhaps unsurprisingly, and certainly disappointingly, 95 percent of these midnight ramblers are men.
And from Curly'sCorner Shop,the Blog
Travelodge has a “sleep director”
Yes, it sounds like an odd post, but the budget hotel group has been having increased problems caused by naked sleepwalkers, mainly stressed out men! They are even having to train their staff to deal with them.
Which reminds me that I knew a South Shields based policeman who suffered with this problem on an infrequent basis during the early part of his career, and was found by his colleagues wandering naked during the early hours in our town centre. They returned him to his home with little more than a traditional police helmet to cover his modesty.
Must have been an arresting sight!
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