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The Thistle London Heathrow Terminal 5 Hotel
I’ve been reviewing hotels professionally for around 25 years now. In London, I’ve stayed everywhere from ridiculous palatial suites decorated with framed Hermes scarves to the dilapidated, two-star grief-holes around Paddington or King’s Cross, always with regal names like ‘The Windsor’ or ‘The Ascot’ or something similarly misleading.
None of them come close to the dystopian weirdness of the Thistle London Heathrow Terminal 5 Hotel. It’s my airport hotel of choice, with rooms often around the £60 a night mark, the promise of the unexpected included.
The mode of arrival sets the spiritually chaotic tone. From T5, guests board a futuristic, personal unmanned transport pod that glides over the grey warrens of airport service roads and warehouses. Five minutes later, you disembark your sleek travel droid in a satellite car park, and follow the painted arrows to a locked gate.
Here, you buckle under the aesthetic whiplash, the brave new world stylings of the pod jarring as you regard the sinister-looking compound beyond the gate. The vibe is inescapably 1970s borstal, or a deserted army barracks in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. The near-constant, atonal droning heralds planes passing overhead every 30 seconds. Press a buzzer and a muffled voice presumably beckons you inside as the creaking gate unlocks. Welcome to the start of your summer holidays!
Crossing the bleak grounds to the reception, you can only think, “Is this really a hotel? Is it not actually an underfunded facility where I’ll be detained until I’m deemed psychologically fit to rejoin society?” When I first stayed there some six years ago, there were foreboding Home Office signs posted up, pointing people to ‘processing rooms’ somewhere in the bowels of the building. The government seemed to have found other premises by the time I recently returned.
I arrive after a flight into London, leaving early the next day to catch another out of it. The lobby is disarmingly normal, with a familiar, harshly-lit Travelodge ambience. The front desk staff seem like teenagers, but maybe that’s my advancing years showing. My fellow guests are mainly families and couples weighted down with luggage, dismayed to find that there are no lifts, eyeing the rickety stairs while commandeering their kids to help elderly relatives.
Dispatched to your room, you traverse the weirdly long corridors, and if anyone is approaching from the other direction, you have several minutes to awkwardly equivocate about making eye contact, debate whether to say hello, or to pretend to look at an important text message.
The rooms themselves are basic, but perfectly comfortable. I’ve paid four times as much for much worse accommodations in Central London. Bed. Desk. Shower. Wifi. Slightly aggressive Do Not Disturb Sign (“Shhhhh! Someone’s Sleeping!”).
I feel like airport hotels in general are a liminal space. A leisure purgatory where your time off has theoretically started, but you’re still tethered to your starting point; the sunburn, unfamiliar coins and tipsy liberation still just out of reach.
After checking in around 3pm, I wander up to the hotel’s signature bar, The Runway Terrace. There’s a solitary couple in their early 20s sitting out on the terrace itself, ignoring each other. It’s late March and they’re bundled up in duffle coats, determined to be al fresco. Defiantly ON HOLIDAY. The continental lifestyle, as such.
The restaurant has fired up its dinner menu. Pub fayre, English classics with exotica such as stone-fired pizzas. I see two women who were coincidentally behind me at Baggage Reclaim earlier, who gave a running commentary on each bag as it nosed past the rubber fringes (“Oh, that one’s a lovely pattern!” “They’ve certainly packed that one to capacity.”). They may still be discussing luggage.
Mostly it’s families with young kids. They’re willing good times into existence, and it’s going well as the starters arrive, but then the youngest starts to eat his flip-flop or the middle one can’t work his pasta and the familiar sniping starts to edge in. There’s understandably a lot of pressure to enjoy something you’ve paid a month’s wages for, it’s just hard to kickstart halcyon times over expensive Carling and creeping anxiety about striking baggage handlers.
After a perfunctory burger and watching 20-30 planes taxi around, I retire and try to sleep, but my body clock is in complete disarray. At 2am, I walk the corridors, awkwardly passing drunken couples turning in for the night. I’m in search of crisps. A man in a blue polo shirt and chinos is squatting next to the vending machines, crying into his hands. The ordering process isn’t intuitive, but the man stops crying for a second, and says, sniffling, “You have to punch in the number and then tap your card, mate.” Then he resumes crying. I can’t tell if he works at the hotel or not.
At 4am, sleep mostly having evaded me, it’s time to head back to T5. The droning has started up as the first planes arrive in London. I wander down to reception, my case banging on the stairs (“Shhhhhh! Someone’s Sleeping!”) and enquire about cabs. I’m sure the pods aren’t running yet and I don’t fancy hauling my case across a freezing, pitch black car park to be met by dead robots.
“You could get an Uber, sure. But if you want security and reliability, then one of these guys is better.” The receptionist motions toward a gaggle of middle-aged men mainlining instant coffee, all with taxis waiting outside. It feels like a shakedown but it’s only three quid more, so I agree. The compound feels less threatening in the dark, somehow. We drive away. I honestly can’t wait to come back.
I’ve been reviewing hotels professionally for around 25 years now. In London, I’ve stayed everywhere from ridiculous palatial suites decorated with framed Hermes scarves to the dilapidated, two-star grief-holes around Paddington or King’s Cross, always with regal names like ‘The Windsor’ or ‘The Ascot’ or something similarly misleading.
None of them come close to the dystopian weirdness of the Thistle London Heathrow Terminal 5 Hotel. It’s my airport hotel of choice, with rooms often around the £60 a night mark, the promise of the unexpected included.
The mode of arrival sets the spiritually chaotic tone. From T5, guests board a futuristic, personal unmanned transport pod that glides over the grey warrens of airport service roads and warehouses. Five minutes later, you disembark your sleek travel droid in a satellite car park, and follow the painted arrows to a locked gate.
Here, you buckle under the aesthetic whiplash, the brave new world stylings of the pod jarring as you regard the sinister-looking compound beyond the gate. The vibe is inescapably 1970s borstal, or a deserted army barracks in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. The near-constant, atonal droning heralds planes passing overhead every 30 seconds. Press a buzzer and a muffled voice presumably beckons you inside as the creaking gate unlocks. Welcome to the start of your summer holidays!
Crossing the bleak grounds to the reception, you can only think, “Is this really a hotel? Is it not actually an underfunded facility where I’ll be detained until I’m deemed psychologically fit to rejoin society?” When I first stayed there some six years ago, there were foreboding Home Office signs posted up, pointing people to ‘processing rooms’ somewhere in the bowels of the building. The government seemed to have found other premises by the time I recently returned.
I arrive after a flight into London, leaving early the next day to catch another out of it. The lobby is disarmingly normal, with a familiar, harshly-lit Travelodge ambience. The front desk staff seem like teenagers, but maybe that’s my advancing years showing. My fellow guests are mainly families and couples weighted down with luggage, dismayed to find that there are no lifts, eyeing the rickety stairs while commandeering their kids to help elderly relatives.
Dispatched to your room, you traverse the weirdly long corridors, and if anyone is approaching from the other direction, you have several minutes to awkwardly equivocate about making eye contact, debate whether to say hello, or to pretend to look at an important text message.
The rooms themselves are basic, but perfectly comfortable. I’ve paid four times as much for much worse accommodations in Central London. Bed. Desk. Shower. Wifi. Slightly aggressive Do Not Disturb Sign (“Shhhhh! Someone’s Sleeping!”).
I feel like airport hotels in general are a liminal space. A leisure purgatory where your time off has theoretically started, but you’re still tethered to your starting point; the sunburn, unfamiliar coins and tipsy liberation still just out of reach.
After checking in around 3pm, I wander up to the hotel’s signature bar, The Runway Terrace. There’s a solitary couple in their early 20s sitting out on the terrace itself, ignoring each other. It’s late March and they’re bundled up in duffle coats, determined to be al fresco. Defiantly ON HOLIDAY. The continental lifestyle, as such.
The restaurant has fired up its dinner menu. Pub fayre, English classics with exotica such as stone-fired pizzas. I see two women who were coincidentally behind me at Baggage Reclaim earlier, who gave a running commentary on each bag as it nosed past the rubber fringes (“Oh, that one’s a lovely pattern!” “They’ve certainly packed that one to capacity.”). They may still be discussing luggage.
Mostly it’s families with young kids. They’re willing good times into existence, and it’s going well as the starters arrive, but then the youngest starts to eat his flip-flop or the middle one can’t work his pasta and the familiar sniping starts to edge in. There’s understandably a lot of pressure to enjoy something you’ve paid a month’s wages for, it’s just hard to kickstart halcyon times over expensive Carling and creeping anxiety about striking baggage handlers.
After a perfunctory burger and watching 20-30 planes taxi around, I retire and try to sleep, but my body clock is in complete disarray. At 2am, I walk the corridors, awkwardly passing drunken couples turning in for the night. I’m in search of crisps. A man in a blue polo shirt and chinos is squatting next to the vending machines, crying into his hands. The ordering process isn’t intuitive, but the man stops crying for a second, and says, sniffling, “You have to punch in the number and then tap your card, mate.” Then he resumes crying. I can’t tell if he works at the hotel or not.
At 4am, sleep mostly having evaded me, it’s time to head back to T5. The droning has started up as the first planes arrive in London. I wander down to reception, my case banging on the stairs (“Shhhhhh! Someone’s Sleeping!”) and enquire about cabs. I’m sure the pods aren’t running yet and I don’t fancy hauling my case across a freezing, pitch black car park to be met by dead robots.
“You could get an Uber, sure. But if you want security and reliability, then one of these guys is better.” The receptionist motions toward a gaggle of middle-aged men mainlining instant coffee, all with taxis waiting outside. It feels like a shakedown but it’s only three quid more, so I agree. The compound feels less threatening in the dark, somehow. We drive away. I honestly can’t wait to come back.