Credit crunch induces a nation of sleepwalkers

The stress of redundancy, red reminder bills, repossession and Christmas is causing 23% of Brits to sleepwalk on more than one occasion each week; according to the 2008 Travelodge Sleepwalking audit. These findings reflect a three-fold* increase on the hotel chain’s 2007 results.

The budget hotel chain’s study of 3,500 adults found eight per cent of sleepers sleepwalk every night and 15% of Brits admitted to a snooze-walk several times a week.

Further findings from the study revealed the top five causes for sleepwalking are:

1. Stress due to financial worries and losing your job
2. Drinking too much alcohol
3. Relationship worries
4. Family concerns
5. Eating too much comfort food such as chocolate, cheese and curry

In addition to the study, Travelodge conducted a sleepwalking audit of its 350 hotels and findings revealed an identical pattern with a three fold increase in 2008. Further findings revealed 98% of the sleeping wanders were naked men** - a three per cent increase from 2007. Also the highest concentration of snooze-walkers were found in Liverpool, Edinburgh and Newcastle.

Hotel Managers also reported the optimum time for sleepwalker spotting is 3.27am and the most likely area to meander was reception.

Strange behaviour of sleepwalkers in Travelodge hotels:

• One sleepwalker dressed in bondage wear was stopped by police in the middle of the night, walking the streets of London close to the Southwark Travelodge. After discovering that the only possession on the gentleman was a Travelodge key card, the police officer was able to identify him as a guest of the Aldgate East Travelodge, some two miles away from where he was stopped.

• At Edinburgh Central Travelodge a naked sleepwalker was found sleeping on the floor in reception at 3.25am. At first the receptionist thought he was unconscious, so he went to check for a pulse. At the same time, the sleepwalker awoke and tried to cuddle the receptionist thinking it was the wife – there were screams from both parties.

• The hotel manager at Newcastle Central Travelodge fell off her chair, when she spotted a naked sleepwalker outside in freezing temperatures in the middle of the night, looking through her office window. The sleepwalker had mistaken the door to the corridor for the bathroom and ended up in the car-park.

• A hotel receptionist at Liverpool Central Travelodge could not believe his eyes when he found a naked male sleepwalker making love to a vending machine.

Leigh McCarron, Travelodge Sleep Director said: "The credit crunch is not just depriving us of cash; it is also debiting our sleep bank account. In 2007 there were three million sleepwalkers in the UK but now this has risen to over 11 million. This is a phenomenal increase and another indicator of how the credit crunch is affecting the nation. Financial worries, and concerns over careers are natural stress inducers that would of course trigger sleepwalking.

“Our reception staff are encountering an ever increasing number of sleepwalkers across all of our hotels so we are running refresher training on how to handle such an incident.”

Both pieces of research were conducted in November 2008 with 350 Travelodge hotel managers and 3,500 adults by OnePoll.

*2007 findings revealed seven per cent of Brits were sleepwalking on more than one occasion each week
** In 2007 95% of sleepwalkers found in Travelodge hotels were naked men
Annually 6.5 million people stay with Travelodge