A room at seven in the morning, and what the airport hotels will really do

The hours between the belt and the bed

The long haul flights that cross the night reach this airport in the first grey part of the morning, from before six until well after nine, and most of the people on them want exactly one thing, which is a bed. The hotels they head for keep a different clock. Standard check in at nearly every building here falls somewhere in the afternoon, and the gap between the two is where a dawn landing goes wrong.

It is worth understanding why the gap exists before trying to argue with it. The room you want at seven is very likely still occupied by someone flying out at eleven. When they leave it has to be stripped, cleaned and inspected, and only then can it be handed to you. A hotel does not hold rooms back out of stubbornness. At seven in the morning it usually has none to give.

What early check in really means

The phrase on the confirmation is subject to availability, and at an airport hotel it has a precise meaning. If the building was not full last night, some rooms were never slept in, and one of those can be handed over the moment you arrive. If it was full, nothing is free until the first departing guests come down with their cases, and the first rooms back from housekeeping go to whoever asked earliest or has been waiting longest.

Airport hotels do turn rooms faster than hotels in town, because a large share of their guests leave before breakfast. That helps. It turns three in the afternoon into eleven in the morning on a good day, not into seven. A request made with the reservation helps the front desk plan and costs nothing to make, and some hotels charge for an early key when they are able to give one. Neither is a promise, and the desk would not build an evening on either.

The only sure key is last night's

The one reliable way to have a room at seven is to book it from the night before. The reservation begins the previous evening, the room is made up and waiting while you are still over the ocean, and it is yours the moment you reach the front desk. You pay for a night you did not sleep in, and what you buy with it is certainty, which at the end of a long haul flight is worth more than it sounds.

Tell the hotel you are arriving in the morning, in writing, when you book. A reservation nobody claims by the small hours can be treated as a no show and released, and the room you paid to guarantee then goes to a stranger off a delayed flight. A short note saying you land at dawn and want the room held for your arrival closes that gap entirely.

Several of the airport hotels also sell day use, a room for a block of daytime hours rather than a night. For a guest who lands at dawn and flies on again that evening it is the neater answer, and it is worth asking whether the hotel offers it before paying for a full night you will only half use.

If the answer at the counter is three o'clock

Sometimes the booking was made late, or the company travel desk would not pay for the extra night, and the answer at the counter is the afternoon. The morning then needs a plan rather than a lobby sofa. Leave the case with the hotel, which the airport hotels routinely hold for arriving guests, and ask whether arriving guests may use the showers by the gym, which some allow. A shower and a clean shirt do more for the next six hours than any amount of coffee.

Eat properly, then stay upright until the room comes. Sleeping in a lobby chair is the worst of both worlds, and it is how guests end up staring at the ceiling in the small hours and asleep at the very moment the evening should have started. Whatever you do before the key arrives, do not arrange anything for the late morning. Nobody is good company six hours off a night flight, the traveller least of all.

Building the evening around the key

The evening depends entirely on when the room became yours, so that is the first thing the desk asks. With a key at seven, sleep until early afternoon, eat, walk, and the evening can start at seven or eight with somebody who has had a proper day behind them. With a key at three, sleep until five and start later, at nine or ten, which several of the women prefer anyway. The shape of a hotel room visit is the same either way, three hours at £700 at the floor of the ladder, and all that changes is the hour it begins.

It is perfectly sensible to message the desk from the arrivals hall and put the evening in the diary. The hotel in full is what matters at that stage, and the start can follow once reception has handed over a key. The room number the desk asks for does not exist until check in, so there is no need to guess it. The hour between the aircraft door and the hotel has a piece of its own, the first hour after landing.

Which buildings make the morning easiest

The walkway hotels come first after a dawn landing, because the route from arrivals is under cover and takes minutes: TW6 2GD at Terminal 5, TW6 3AF on the walkway at Terminal 4, and the central area hotel a few minutes on foot from Terminals 2 and 3. The bigger hotels along the Bath Road are a short ride away and have more rooms coming free each morning, which sometimes tips the answer your way.

Policies differ by building and by night, so ask the hotel itself rather than trusting what a colleague was told last year. The index of airport hotels sets out where each one actually stands. The desk is not connected to any of these buildings in any way, and has no reason to be.

Who is good the evening after a night flight

Three of the blondes on this site suit the evening after a night flight particularly well. Thea is used to long haul arrival times and keeps the first half hour undemanding: a drink, and a conversation that asks nothing of a tired guest. Nancy takes any terminal at any hour and will notice before you do that you have not eaten anything real since the aircraft. Nora lives near Paddington, comes out by train, and is cheerful without being loud about it, which is the right temperature for a day that began at four. The ladder of figures lives on rates, and how a booking comes together is explained on booking.