Says RCI president Adam Goldstein:

"Although we think bedtime is the last thing on anyone's mind while on a Royal Caribbean cruise, we do realise that sleeping well is essential to our guests' holiday experience. Our new bedding programme will provide our guests with a compelling stateroom experience."

The new bedding programme makes its debut in May on Royal Caribbean's newest ship, Freedom of the Seas, and will be rolled out to the rest of the fleet over the following12 months.

This means that when the 3,114 passenger capacity Navigator of the Seas arrives in the UK in April, 2007, to begin its first ever season of ex-UK sailings, the ship will feature the new bedding programme, which includes:

• New bed frames designed to prevent sagging
• Nine-inch-thick spring mattresses with separate two-inch-thick micro-fibre pillow tops
• 220-thread-count long-staple cotton-blend sheets
• Two micro-fibre pillows, plus one decorative pillow
• Duvet with cotton-blend covers
• Bed skirts
• Coloured bed scarves placed at the end of the beds to protect the duvet.

Royal Caribbean has also created a solution to the dreaded gap that invariably forms when two twin beds are pushed together to form a larger, queen-size bed. Custom-designed pillow tops are doubled over when placed on twin beds, but are unfolded and laid on top of one another, and the mattresses, to create a gap-free queen-size mattress.