Airport hotel bookings, sorted by what you can actually walk to

TW6 2GD is joined to Terminal 5 by a covered walk of about five minutes. TW6 3AF is joined to Terminal 4 the same way. Those two are the short list at this airport, and both are worth paying a little more for if your flight is at six in the morning.

Everything else involves a shuttle or a car, however the sign reads. TW6 2AQ is a five minute drive on the northern perimeter with rooms that face the runway. The buildings carrying Terminal 5 on their signs out at Colnbrook and Longford are ten minutes away by road. Ask which door the hotel bus leaves from before you assume there is one.

RH6 0PH sits at the North Terminal and RH6 0LL at the South, both within a short covered walk of their own check in halls. The desk arranges bookings there, but it will not pretend that Gatwick is round the corner from this one.

From central London it is a serious journey and from Heathrow a longer one still. Gatwick bookings want notice measured in days rather than hours, and a duration long enough to justify the travel, which in practice means a dinner date or an overnight rather than the minimum.

A hotel at Royal Victoria Dock, E16 1AL, serves London City Airport, which behaves nothing like Heathrow. The flights are short haul, the terminal is small, the schedule stops early in the evening and the whole place empties by ten.

Practically that means a City arrival has an ordinary London evening in front of it rather than a layover, and the hotel is a base rather than a refuge. It is on the other side of the city from this desk's usual ground, so give it a day's notice where you can.

Three hours is the minimum and her travel is counted inside it, which is the rule that surprises people most. Give the desk the full hotel name and the hour, or a flight number if you are still airborne, and the reply comes back with a realistic arrival time rather than a hopeful one.

Kitchens at airport hotels close earlier than city ones. Bars run later than you expect. The quiet rooms are the ones away from the road rather than away from the runway, because it is the early luggage in the corridor that wakes people, not the aircraft. And no hotel anywhere on this list is a partner of the desk. She arrives as your guest, which in these buildings is the most ordinary event of the night.

Laura enjoys these buildings rather than tolerating them, has an opinion on every one on the Heathrow row and will tell you which ones sound quiet in the brochure and are not. Nancy has the shuttle routes memorised and clears up the naming confusion before it costs anybody an hour.

For specific terminals, Angelika and Stacy take the Terminal 5 end, Karolina and Milena the central pair, and Thea the late arrivals at Terminal 4. Say which building you are in and the desk will put two workable names in front of you rather than the whole list.

If you already know where you are, go straight to the place. The airport overview covers TW6 as a whole, while Terminal 5, the central terminals and Terminal 4 each have their own timings and their own problems. For the hotel row on the northern perimeter, read the Bath Road.