Sweet Dreams begin with a good hotel bed

Such has been the explosion of hotels in recent years that stars no longer suffice to distinguish them. Boutique, spa and desig properties have all entered the tourist vocabulary and, were Joyce writing today, he may have to revise Leopold Bloom’s puzzle to "cross Dublin without passing a hotel."

What intrigues this traveller, however, is that for all the marketing involved in modern hotels, relatively little is said about the reason we stay there in the first place - the bed.

A hotel bed can make or break a place. Staying at the Jean Michel Cousteau resort in Fiji, for example, I remember spending a hypnotic night on a king-size, custom-made mattress imported from California. I awoke feeling like I’d added a day to my life.

On a recent stay at Belfast’s Merchant hotel, I collapsed onto a King Koil Pillow Top mattress, a cloud-like confection designed "to ensure the best night’s sleep anywhere outside your own home."

Give me a bad night’s kip however, and a wretched Mr Hyde emerges.

I’ve stayed in package holiday beds that felt like benches, and remember one four-star establisment in which the mattress dipped so badly, I awoke feeling like I’d been sat on by Marlon Brando.

The trade is beginning to cotton on, however. Westin’s ‘Heavenly Bed’, the original super-scratcher, contains a mattress with 900 individual coils; three sheets ranging in thread count from 200 to 250 and five varieties of pillow.

Sheraton’s ‘Sweet Sleeper Bed’ offers a ‘cushy mattress’, ‘petal-soft blankets’ and hypoallergenic pillows. Such was guests’ enthusiasm, both can be purchased online.

Back home too, Dublin’s Radisson St. Helen’s hotel has just undergone a €6.5m overhaul to coincidewith its 10th anniversary. Part of the refit sees all 151 tooms getting extra-long beds and duck down duvets ‘for a better slumber’ – as well as tailoring to taller guests.

I’m getting tired just thinking about it.