The night before I went to Stockholm, I stayed in a purple pod in Gatwick.
It’s called Yotel (and I’m not sponsored; I’m just surprised more people don’t know about it). It’s a chain, with hotels in Gatwick, Heathrow, Paris CDG, Amsterdam Schiphol, Singapore, Boston & New York. I’ve only stayed in the Gatwick one.
It’s a miniature hotel room that you book by the hour rather than the night and although it has staff at the front desk round the clock, it also has check-in machines and vending machines so you can come & go freely.
You get a pod. They call them cabins but I persist in calling them pods. They’re built interlocking so one room will have a high bed and the next will have a low one – they’re literally on top of each other. In all the assorted times I’ve stayed at Yotel, I’ve only had a high bed once and somehow it feels more spacious to have a low one. It’s not. It’s literally not but maybe having your luggage and table next to you instead of below you is an optical illusion.
There’s just room for a suitcase in the narrow aisle between the bed & the bathroom. And the bathroom has a glass wall and sliding door so although you can fit two people in the bed, just about, you may or may not want them in the pod while you’re in the bathroom.
It’s a design masterpiece. There are cubbyholes for towels and whatnot in the bathroom, there’s a really good waterfall shower, a table folds down and there’s a folding chair hanging from the door, which has blackout blinds over the little window. They’ve even squeezed a TV in at the end of the bed and there’s a shelf for overnight essentials- like “where do I put my glasses while I’m asleep?” This has it sorted.
It’s got heating and AC, although I always find it a bit too hot. The lights are either too purple or too green but these are designed for a few hours sleep and/or a quick shower when you’ve got a late/early flight, not for a multi-night holiday. Oh, and if I haven’t mentioned it – it’s literally inside the terminal. I can be at the Beehive pub for breakfast in under three minutes and down to security in under five.
Depending on how long you’re staying (I average about five hours), it’s proportionally more expensive than a real hotel. But you don’t use them for regular hotel hours and you pay both for the convenience and for not having to get a taxi or shuttle bus to a hotel. It’s worth it sometimes. No, I’m not sponsored. Wish I was. For the record, it would have saved me £72 this time. I’m a big fan of the pods.
These looks great. I’d love to use one, I’d happily pay by the hour for a bit of privacy and a snooze at the airport.