The Today Show Tests Out the Westin Jet Lag Room in Chicago

March 5, 2008 at 11:48 AM | by juliana | Comments (2)

Peter Greenberg is on the scene again trying to figure out how to overcome jet lag.

Alex Nesterov spends two weeks out of every month traveling and logs about 75 nights in hotels a year. He says he suffers from chronic jet lag where he feels tired all the time, is disoriented and he says his short-term memory is affected.

And he's not alone in feeling this way. According to Westin Hotels, over 900 guests call hotel doctors complaining of jet-lag like symptoms each month. So the Starwood brand, popular amongst road warriors, has started testing out a Jet Lag room at the Westin Chicago River North.

It looks like a normal Westin hotel room--heavenly bed, iPod docking staion, fee for WiFi access, etc.--but the place is equipped with gadgets to fight jet lag.

Ok some are not exactly gadgets like the calming tea but there's an oscillating fan and a meditation loop that plays on the TV.

The craziest thing might be found in a good shower where a high intensity light claims to reset your body clock by trigging the third receptor in the human eye. As Greenberg says:

"With one button to relax you and another to rev you up it can make the average traveler feel like James Bond."

Umm...yeah. (You can read more about the third receptor in the online version of this segment.)

So they put Alex Nesterov in the room to try it out after he flew to Chicago from Paris and suffering from jet lag. Alex films a sort of video diary overnight and at the end says he slept about five and a half hours. Smart guy that he is, he mentions the possibility of a placebo effect but still he feels better.

The Westin's Jet Lag room is still in testing but once they figure out what works the best, expect more jet lag rooms to pop up in their hotels soon.

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