There was a point when I realized I wasn’t looking at hotels the way everyone else was.
My husband would send me a beautiful place and say:
“Look at that pool.”
I’d barely notice it.
I’d scroll straight to the reviews and search:
“mattress”
“noise”
“thin walls”
“comfortable bed”
Then I’d zoom in on pictures of the bedroom.
Are those blackout curtains?
Is the bed next to the hallway?
Does the room have air conditioning?
Is there a nightclub downstairs?
I knew how ridiculous it looked.
We were planning a vacation.
I was supposed to be thinking about restaurants, beaches, what I was going to wear, what we were going to see.
Instead, I was worrying about whether some mattress hundreds of miles away was going to ruin my week.
And the frustrating part was…
I genuinely loved traveling.
When a bad night starts taking over the next day
The problem wasn’t simply feeling a little tired in the morning.
A really rough night could change the entire rhythm of the next day.
I’d wake up in the hotel, look at the clock, and immediately remember everything we had planned.
Breakfast at 8.
Walking tour at 9.
Lunch reservation.
Museum in the afternoon.
Dinner somewhere we’d booked three months ago.
On paper, it sounded amazing.
When I was exhausted, it sounded like an endurance event.
So I’d get up. Have coffee. Try to rally. Tell everyone I was fine.
And for the first few hours, I usually could.
But around lunchtime, I’d start thinking about the hotel room.
By 2 PM, I wasn’t looking at the beautiful neighborhood around me anymore.
I was thinking:
“If I go back now, maybe I can sleep for an hour.”
There were afternoons when everyone else would continue exploring and I’d say:
“You guys go. I’m just going to lie down for a little bit.”
Then I’d go back to a hotel room I’d spent hundreds of dollars a night on, close the curtains in the middle of the afternoon, put my phone down… and desperately try to nap.
Sometimes I would.
Sometimes I’d just lie there exhausted.
Either way, I was missing the vacation.
That was the part I hated most.
I hadn’t flown all that way because I wanted to spend the afternoon in a dark room.
Eventually, you start planning around the possibility of being tired
It happened gradually.
I’d hesitate before booking early activities.
I’d be the person asking how late dinner was going to be.
I’d want to return to the hotel while everyone else wanted another drink.
I’d think twice about a weekend away because I knew Monday could be brutal if I came home exhausted.
And before trips, I’d start trying to control everything I possibly could.
My pillow.
Earplugs.
Eye mask.
Room temperature.
Quiet room requests.
No room near the elevator.
No late-night flight.
No early morning plans.
It felt like I was becoming increasingly difficult.
But I wasn’t trying to be difficult.
I was trying to protect the next day.
Because after enough bad nights, you learn that the cost isn’t just the night itself.
It’s breakfast when you barely speak.
The activity you skip.
The beach afternoon you sleep through.
The dinner you’re too tired to enjoy.
The irritation over something that normally wouldn’t bother you.
The feeling that everyone else is having the vacation you were supposed to be having too.
The strange part: sometimes nothing was actually “wrong” with the hotel
This took me a long time to understand.
Sometimes the bed was perfectly comfortable.
The room was quiet.
The temperature was fine.
The curtains were dark.
And I’d still wake up feeling like I had barely rested.
That made me realize I might have been focusing too much on the mattress.
Travel changes more than your bed.
Your routine changes. Your meal times change. You’re in a different room. There are unfamiliar sounds. Different light. Different temperatures. You may be staying up later. You may have had a drink with dinner. You’re thinking about tomorrow’s plans.
And when you already have a history of sleeping badly away from home, there can be another layer on top of all of it:
Expectation.
You get into bed thinking:
“I really need to sleep tonight.”
Then you wake up, look at the clock, and think:
“Oh no. Not again.”
Suddenly you’re not simply awake.
You’re calculating.
If I sleep now, I can still get five hours.
Okay, four and a half.
Maybe I should cancel tomorrow morning.
Maybe I can nap after lunch.
And now tomorrow’s vacation is happening in your head at 3 AM.
I realized I didn’t need the perfect hotel room
I needed more consistency.
That became the biggest shift for me.
For years, I approached travel sleep by trying to make every new bedroom perfect.
But hotel rooms are never going to feel exactly like home.
There will always be a different pillow. A strange air conditioner. A hallway door closing somewhere. A partner rolling over. A little light under the curtains.
So instead of trying to control absolutely everything around me, I started focusing more on the things I could bring with me.
A familiar wind-down routine.
Similar bedtime habits.
My eye mask.
A cool room when possible.
A little time to decompress instead of going directly from a busy restaurant to bed.
And most importantly, something that told my brain:
The location changed.
The routine didn’t.
It sounds almost too simple.
But there was something reassuring about repeating the same little sequence whether I was home, in New York, in Miami, or halfway across the world.
I stopped treating sleep on vacation as something I simply had to hope would go well.
I started treating my nighttime routine like something worth packing.
That also changed the way I looked at nighttime supplements
I’d previously thought about sleep products as something you took only when things had already gone wrong.
I wanted something different.
Something simple enough to become part of the routine itself.
Something I could use at home and bring with me when I traveled.
And because I didn’t want my entire routine centered around melatonin, I started looking more closely at melatonin-free options.
That search eventually led me to DO NOT DISTURB by SHOO.
