Hotels in the southern Spanish city of Seville are looking to lure beach tourists to their scorching inland city this summer by offering “siesta rates,” with rooms discounted 30 percent during the hottest hours of the day—between 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. “The siesta is making a comeback, recycled for the modern world as ‘Iberian yoga,’” Elizabeth Nash writes in The Independent. “Far from the afternoon snooze that consumes valuable working time, Spain’s siesta is being rebranded as essential for spiritual wellbeing and a balanced life.”

Hoteliers are teaming up with local restaurants to push the concept: After a wine-heavy lunch, tourists can rest up and sober up before heading back out to enjoy Seville in the more bearable evening hours, then return to their beach resorts.

From the article:

That way you don’t hit the road in an alcoholic haze—a disproportionate number of Spanish motoring accidents take place after lunch—or stumble back to the office half asleep.

Predictably, critics fear that the siesta rates are a way of dignifying renting hotel rooms by the hour.

But speaking from personal experience in Seville several summers ago—the pavement literally felt like it was melding to my flip flops and I wouldn’t have been surprised if my hair had gone up in flames—the siesta rates sound positively dreamy.

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Photo by Chrispitality, via Flickr (Creative Commons).