Picture the scene: it’s the first night of your holiday, the room is gorgeous, the bed big and comfy, but you just can’t fall asleep. It’s a common scenario, sometimes known as the “first-night effect”. And it turns out there is a valid reason for our inability to nod off in new digs, and it’s all to do with our brains.

The left side of our brain – the analytical half– stays on high alert when in a new environment in order to keep us safe. Our homes are lovely and familiar, so an unfamiliar habitat can throw us out of whack and lead to a poor night’s shuteye.

‘Sleeping is one of the most important topics for us,’ says Michael Struck, CEO and founder of international hotel group Ruby. ‘Long before the opening of the first Ruby Hotel, I was already intensively involved in this area. I sought contact with sleep researchers and adopted their findings.’

One such expert was Dr Els van der Helm, a sleep neuroscientist who has worked with high-profile companies including Facebook, Swiss Re and Deloitte.

‘When we travel, we tend to lose our routine, which makes it easier to fall out of established healthy habits and into unhealthy ones,’ she says. ‘Travel for work can be associated with more stress and more stimuli to process, while travel for fun tends to be associated with later bedtimes, more alcohol, late-night food etc.’

Dr van der Helm offers plenty of tips to avoid falling into these pitfalls, including going to bed at the same time, limiting alcohol and caffeine, and bringing items from home that ‘give a sense of familiarity’. The hotel itself also has a responsibility to provide the best possible environment to encourage good sleep. There’s a lot more to this than simply the bed. But that’s a good place to start. The standard Ruby Hotel bed dimensions are capacious and feature custom-made mattresses, measuring 2.1m long. Extra-long premium cotton bedding keeps the sleeper ‘warm in the winter and pleasantly cool in the summer’.

Ruby Hotels was founded in Munich in 2013, and the group has grown rapidly in the past decade, with 15 hotels to its name (the new Ruby Zoe, Notting Hill Gate and Ruby Stella, Clerkenwell open this year), and 19 in the pipeline. And beyond great design and amenities, Struck has prioritised making rooms as sleep-conducive as possible, including implementing state-of-the-art sound insulation and lighting.

Scent is a powerful tool and can influence how you feel in a space. To encourage quality sleep, Ruby has also developed a “scent concept” that gives every room a pleasant atmosphere, while the natural ingredients used in its bathroom amenities have been specially developed to offer a calming effect. Ruby bedrooms and products are 80 percent standardised – creating a feeling of familiarity for guests who regularly choose Ruby Hotels.

‘Our bodies love routines and sleep better when we maintain them,’ says Struck, ‘even when travelling.’ It’s R&R done right.

ruby-hotels.com