Stay at the Thistle Heathrow hotel and take a driverless pod to Terminal 5

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• richie says:

  10 Jan10 January 05:29

  I thought it was free lhr-thistle. And the £5 charge was to get from hotel-lhr. They couldn’t really charge you for arriving because how would they even know you had got there via pod?
  Biggest problem with this hotel is it overbooks itsself . I ended up with a twin room twice after booking a double. Service is terrible. Much better off staying in the premier in bath road. Use purple parking business to park and they will get you to the airport and back.

• Antonio says:

  10 Jan10 January 06:19

  I’ve used those pods for free plenty of times, just for fun when I’ve had some time to kill at Heathrow before check in. Do they charge you upon entry to the car park?

  • richie says:

    10 Jan10 January 08:49

    No there is a gate to the hotel at the far right hand side of the business parking.

• Waribai says:

  10 Jan10 January 06:51

  So, can you actually use them for free?

  • Brian says:

    10 Jan10 January 07:22

    Pods are free but you cannot get through the secured gate to the hotel without paying £5 pp

• Cheshire Pete says:

  10 Jan10 January 07:31

  I’ve used this and they are fun and quick!

  Glad I’m not a family of 4 though. £40 for a return journey seems a typical rip off Britain daylight robbery.

• Jonathan says:

  10 Jan10 January 07:51

  We stayed (and left the car) there in August, but balked at the £20 extra to use the pods. The free local bus goes from outside the hotel, so we used that instead!

• Nick says:

  10 Jan10 January 09:14

  I’ve used the Pods. They are very easy to use and take you straight into the terminal. I’ll be checking the Thistle hotel prices in future to combine with it though now.

• paul says:

  10 Jan10 January 15:10

  Scandalous that they charge £5. I would rather take the bus especially with a family of 4. There is effectively now a charge to access the airport on top of the huge airport fees they charge to stand in line at security. The Valet parking operators now have to add £6 to every booking to cover an access fee.
  So you have the worlds most inefficient and probably worst International airline hub accessible by the worlds most expensive train journey ( more expensive per mile than flying First Class) or the worlds most expensive and inefficient hotel bus service. Parking is the most expensive of any UK airport and there is an access fee to limit competition.

  Remind why we don’t need a new hub airport?

  • signol says:

    10 Jan10 January 15:57

    Isn’t the world’s most expensive train journey Leicester Square to Covent Garden on the tube? 😉

    • Garry says:

      11 Jan11 January 16:31

      No, don’t be silly.

  • flibbly says:

    10 Jan10 January 19:53

    That must be the least hyperbolic rant in the world ever.

• Mark R says:

  10 Jan10 January 19:14

  Pods are great, and journey time is 5 minutes from T5 to hotel/car park, you are within the airport grounds for the journey with planes flying over you. You buzz the Hotel staff at the gate using an intercom and then pay at reception (if they remember). When checking out you pay for the return journey and are issued with a code for the gate. For time, cost and fun it wins for me. The hotel rooms are very old fashioned but ok for a night.

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