Holiday Inn Express is trialling a new kind of alarm clock, one that swaps the familiar piercing beep for something far softer, a carefully timed aroma designed to nudge guests awake. The idea sounds like a quirky marketing trick at first glance, but the brand says it is based on a simple question: why do mornings have to feel so aggressive?
The small device, which sits beside the bed, releases short bursts of preselected scents such as cinnamon roll, fresh coffee, or citrus. Instead of jolting guests upright, it aims to ease them from sleep by activating smell receptors, a sense that stays surprisingly active even while we rest. The hotel chain says it wants to create a “kinder first moment of the day”, something many travellers could probably use.
Smoke alarms have to make noise because the human brain basically switches off its sense of smell during deep sleep, which means you cannot rely on scent to wake anyone in a fire. Smelling salts might seem like a counterexample, but they only work when they’re shoved right under someone’s nose, delivering an irritant strong enough to trigger a reflex; that isn’t remotely practical or safe as a wake‑up system. Sound is the only stimulus proven to cut through every sleep stage fast enough to alert people to danger, which is why fire safety standards everywhere insist on loud alarms, not scented ones.
