Review: the YOTELAIR Gatwick Airport hotel – what’s it like to stay in a windowless cabin?

This is my review of the YOTELAIR hotel at London Gatwick airport.

The YOTELAIR at Gatwick opened about 15 years ago and offers the intriguing concept of sleeping inside tiny windowless cabins.

YOTEL offered Head for Points a free stay in a Premium room to give it a try, which I was happy to accept before an early morning British Airways Gatwick flight to Grenoble.

What is YOTEL?

Founded by Yo Sushi creator Simon Woodroffe, YOTEL is based on Japanese capsule hotels.  YOTELs have rather small rooms, called cabins, and are designed for short stays.  You can pay by the hour and stay as little as four hours.

The YOTEL brand consists of three different hotel concepts:

• YOTELAIR – airport hotels
• YOTEL – city hotels
• YOTELPAD – aparthotels

The YOTEL New York which opened in 2011 was the first city hotel offering small functional rooms at in a central location. With most people spending their time in the city and not their hotel room, this concept makes sense for people who want a level of quality but are less concerned about space. This year, YOTEL is opening a new city hotel in Geneva called YOTEL Geneva Lake.

Whilst the airport hotels are a similar design, they are generally smaller and with less communal space.  Most guests will only want to book the rooms to sleep and take a shower.

My night at YOTELAIR Gatwick

There is only one other hotel which is closer to the departure gates than YOTELAIR and that is the BLOC hotel (which a reader reviewed for us here back in 2017). YOTELAIR is literally a 5 minute walk from the train station and around 7 minutes from airport security.

For clarity, YOTELAIR Gatwick is landside and not airside.  (BLOC is also landside – there are no airside hotels at any UK airport as far as I know.)  If you are in transit through Gatwick, you will need to clear immigration and, the next day, pass back through security to your connecting flight.

YOTEL is in the South Terminal which is used mainly by British Airways.  There is a free monorail linking the North and South Terminals so you shouldn’t be put off if your flight is from North.  Trains from London arrive at the South Terminal so you are likely to pass through it irrespective of where you are flying from.

As you come out of the station you turn right, walk towards Pret and take the lift down to the right. Unsurprisingly, for a windowless capsule hotel, YOTELAIR is on the ground floor.

Check in

Mission Control, the hotel’s reception, was to the right and as the hotel is very small and there was no one else waiting, check in was very quick.

I was offered a complimentary hot drink, which I declined as it was already past 10pm, and also if I wanted breakfast. This can be pre-ordered at £7.95 for a continental breakfast.

Hot meals, ready in 15 minutes, included Thai green curry, chicken tikka masala, vegetarian lasagne and Singapore noodles, all for £5.25. Given this is the cost of a meal deal airside, it doesn’t seem bad although I didn’t try any of them.

Wine is available for the shockingly affordable – for London – price of £3.95 per glass.

The cabins

YOTELAIR Gatwick offers three room types: a standard, which has a single bed only, a Premium Queen with folding bed and a Premium Twin with bunk beds. Given there were two of us, I tried the Premium Queen.

The cabins are along a hallway and it felt a bit like walking along the cabins on a cruise ship – probably, as I’ve never been on a cruise ….

There are internal windows with blackout blinds for privacy. To be honest, I’m not sure if there’s much point to these.

The occupied cabins had the curtains closed and the empty ones didn’t which means you could look inside the cabin from the hallway. 

The default lighting is pink, but you can change it inside the cabin with a few different presets. The lighting controls are a bit dated in our smart-home world (I’m not sure what more modern YOTELs are like). It took a second to work out what was what, but I managed to get the main lights on.

The bed was in sofa-mode by default, with two cans of water next to it:

Underneath the bed is a surprisingly large storage area, big enough for a couple of suitcases.

Next to the bed was the ‘bathroom’.  You could shut the curtains and there was a sliding door which needed to be closed when taking a shower as apparently the smoke detector might go off.

The shower was larger than average, which you might find surprising given the size of the cabin.  There was a handheld shower head as well as a rainfall shower and water pressure was strong.

There were two bottles of Urban Jungle toiletries – one bodywash and one shampoo – in the shower. 

The design of the cabin is very clever I must admit.  A table and chair are stored within the wall storage unit (see below) which also had a TV and four UK sockets.

The table could be flipped up and when the bed was in sofa mode there was enough room to sit at the table.

As most guests only stay for a few hours or overnight, there was no proper wardrobe.  There was one lonely hanger for a jacket or a shirt.

To turn the sofa into a bed you press a big round button on the right-hand bedside table. The bed fully slides down to extend, with just a small walkway around the base for access to the bathroom.

The mattress was very comfortable and I slept well, despite the fact that it needs to fold.

Some sort of air conditioning / ventilation was available. It had a few settings from ‘cooler’ to ‘warmer’ so it wasn’t a precise control. It worked well enough that we didn’t overheat in the small room.

Conclusion

Due to its location inside the airport YOTELAIR is a great choice for early morning flights or when landing very late.

In fact, you NEED to arrive late. Check-in is at 6pm for an overnight stay, with departure by 9am, if you want the lowest rate. You will be charged more if you arrive or leave outside these hours because the hotel effectively runs 24/7, selling the capsules as day rooms during the day.

Some of the technology and fittings are a little dated and could do with an upgrade, although as you are unlikely to spend much time here I’m not sure an HD TV would make much difference. Some iPad room controls would work a treat, however.

I believe the most important things an airport hotel has to offer are a comfortable bed, a good shower and easy access to the airport itself. YOTELAIR Gatwick ticks all three boxes and I can see myself booking a cabin again in the future. The only downside could be storage as with two people and more than two suitcases it could feel cramped.

For stays longer than a few hours, do shop around.  The Hampton by Hilton inside the North Terminal is a ‘proper’ hotel which we reviewed here back in 2016.  An alternative South Terminal option is the Hilton, reviewed here. You’re unlikely to beat YOTELAIR pricing if all you are doing is passing the time during a long stopover or arriving late for an early flight the next day.

Thanks to the YOTEL team for arranging my stay.  You can find out more, and book, on the YOTEL website here. Rooms start at £95 in April for an overnight (6pm to 9am) stay.

You can read our full series of London airport hotel reviews here.

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