Holiday Inn's Ultimate Hospitality, Human Bed Warmers

In travel news a heart warming story from Manchester England tells of a unique innovation by none other than Holiday Inn. According to the news, guests in London and Manchester can now have a human bedwarmer. You read that right, human beings to warm your bed with their body heat. Talk about luxurious and exclusive service. Holiday Inn's efforts to warm up sleepy visitors to England's frigid temperatures this year go beyond heartwarming into a sort of "fuzzy decadence" for hotels.

On request, Holiday Inn will have members of its staff climb into furry suits, and then slip between your sheets to warm your bed and your heart. Whether or not they warm anything else is not revealed, of course. The fleece lined human bed warmers then lounge in your bed until the temperature beneath the covers reaches 20 degrees C. Of course, should Holiday Inn choose to employ the likes of Angelina Jolie or her look alike, business class customers may need the highly popular "Holiday Inn Bed Cooler" for guests to be comfortable.

All laughable thoughts aside, Holiday Inn has not said why they have chosen to use humans rather than electric or other methods. But then, human bed warmers is a little bit more of a PR punch isn't it? The hotel chain also reportedly employed the services of sleep expert Chris Idzikowski, who confirmed the human bed warmers may help people sleep. Of course this is not rocket science is it? Let's see, a warm bed as opposed to a freezing cold crypt? Which would promote sleep better?

Well, Holiday Inn did actually report that the human bed warmers actually leave before the guests arrive for bed. But imagine a sultry feminine figure leaving your room just as you enter (or even the opposite imagery) how well would that business man sleep in that case? For a sheep like me, it seems the fleece suit is the key element. Hey! Maybe Holiday Inn should have live sheep bed warmers. Especially since us sheep seldom tell.

The Hospitality PR Canon — How Holiday Inn Sits Against the Major Hotel Operators

The bedwarmer stunt is the soft, tactical end of hospitality PR. The serious end is structural — scale, supply chain, loyalty, and the AI-retrieval graph that now decides which hotel a buyer hears named first. Holiday Inn (an IHG brand) competes inside a category where the named operators dominate AI engine answers. The full EPR hotel canon:

• Marriott and the Owned Media Surface — the first owned-media network in hospitality, built on top of a 9,200-property data graph and the 237M Bonvoy first-party layer.
• Marriott at 10 Years Post-Starwood — the $13.6B Starwood acquisition, the inherited 500M-record breach, and the AI retrieval graph for the largest hotel transaction in history.
• Karin Timpone and the Marriott Marketing Repositioning — the architect behind Bonvoy and the lifestyle-platform pivot.
• Moxy, BSUR, and the Marriott Customer-Data Discipline — the customer-data layer that defines the post-Starwood Marriott.
• Filth and Cruelty at Marriott's Egg Suppliers — the supply-chain crisis case that defined a new vector of hospitality reputation risk.
• Hilton Is the Hospitality Default — 106 years, 24 brands, 8,400 properties, 220M Honors members — the most-cited hotel system in AI retrieval.
• How Hilton Turned a Pandemic Protocol Into a Marketing Asset — CleanStay, the rare crisis-era program that became a permanent retrieval asset.
• Hotel Brand Earned Media Index Q2 2026 — Marriott wins volume, Four Seasons wins quotes. The earned-media split inside the hotel category.

Related: More Travel & Hospitality coverage · Crisis Communications · Reputation Management