YOTEL coming to London airports

Have a few hours to spare before that connecting flight, and want to grab a few winks? Or maybe your plane doesn’t leave until the following morning, and you’ll need to find a hotel room in a strange city? If you don’t feel like leaving the terminal (and subsequently having to endure another pass through security) you may soon be able to relax in style — as long as you’re in the UK — with YOTEL.

Simon Woodroffe, chairman and founder of YO! Everything, including the popular franchise sushi conveyor restaurant chain YO! Sushi, has hit upon the idea of upscale airport hotel rooms. The 10 square-meter cabins resemble Japanese capsule hotels, and offer a plenitude of amenities for the passing-through business traveler. From CNN.com:

Costing roughly 70 dollars a night (but also bookable for four-hour periods), the rooms are aimed at passengers waiting for connections or those who want to sleep or work before a meeting.

The budget hotel concept has already proved a hit in London, with the 2005 launch of easyHotel by no-frills airline pioneer Stelios Haji-Ioannou.

But while easyHotel cuts costs by stripping away luxuries such as televisions, Yotel bosses say their creation will squeeze high-end amenities into rooms.

Each soundproof cabin will contain a sofa that converts into a double bed, a pull down desk, closet space, adjustable mood lighting, a shower, wireless Internet, an iPod connection and a flat-screen TV.

Check-in and check-out will be automated, but food and drinks will be available.

YOTEL cabins will be opening inside Terminal 4 at Heathrow Airport and South Terminal at Gatwick Airport in Spring 2007.