In a new series, Rooms Without Views, our travel experts spend the night in windowless hotel rooms to see if they’re worth sacrificing natural light.
Clambering on tiptoe up a narrow flight of steps, I crawl into the tiny wooden box, hauling my backpack behind me. My head is inches from the ceiling, and I am sitting down.
Besides my contorted body, there is nothing in here but a mirror, a ledge with a plug socket and charging ports, and a single mattress, which takes up the entire floor space.
As I pull down the shutters and wriggle under the duvet, an intrusive thought flashes across my mind: ‘This is what lying in a coffin feels like.’
Welcome to the world of Zedwell’s Japanese-style sleeping capsules: stackable pods with a light, a bed, and not much else.
Not so much a hotel room as a sock drawer.
Popular across Asia, capsule hotels, which began in Osaka, Japan, in 1979 as an ultra-cheap place for commuters to sleep, have never caught on in the UK — until now.
Zedwell, which specialises in flipping ‘dead-space’ buildings in central London into zero frills, energy-efficient, budget hotels, has five properties including one in Knightsbridge that was once a Burberry storeroom and one on Great Windmill Street that was once the Trocadero.
Then, directly across the street from that one, there’s the capsule hotel, which offers something different: the chance to spend the night in what is said to be world’s biggest capsule hotel (there are 1,000 cocoons, as they call them), from £30 a night.
With cheap hotels becoming a thing of the past (a basic room at the Premier Inn Hub in London’s Brick Lane is around £95 and a Travelodge near Tower Bridge is £86), it’s an attractive prospect.
Even more so given the location, seconds from Piccadilly Circus and surrounded by the capital’s biggest attractions, with the West End, Regent Street, Soho, Covent Garden and Chinatown on your doorstep.
The catch, of course, is space. The pods clock in at around one metre by 2.2, and for one night only, I’ve been invited to try them out.
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Would you stay here for £30 a night?
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Yes
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No
From the outside, the hotel doesn’t look like much. In fact, it looks like a building site.
The Grade II-listed facade is clad in scaffolding, and in lieu of a main entrance, which is still under construction, I enter through a side door and a corridor with grubby concrete floors that remind me of a warehouse that hosts raves in Melbourne.
The black-clad security guard patrolling the doorway adds to the nightclub vibe and, if I’m honest, makes me feel a bit uneasy.
But inside the lobby, it is modern and minimalist. In keeping with its no frills ethos, the hotel is light on staff (I only clock two during my stay), and check-in is left to you, via iPads on the wall.
You don’t get anything besides your capsule, it’s bed, bedding and a tiny towel.
If you want a bottle of water, you buy it from a vending machine in reception, which also sells hotel slippers, dental kits, padlocks and eye masks. If you want a locker to store your things, you pay for that too.
It is, in other words, the Ryanair of hotels.
Check-in is not until 3pm (unless you want to pay £20 extra to arrive early or stay late), but as I arrive shortly before 6pm, that’s not a problem.
Except it is. The tablet screen tells me my ‘room’ is not ready. Within seconds, a helpful staff member explains that this is because I’ve booked a women’s only dorm, and they need to confirm that I am who I say I am.
Identity check complete, I validate my keycard (which are for the dorms rather than the pods themselves) and look for my digs.
Each dorm contains between eight and 100 cocoons, and mine – 1409, on the first floor – has somewhere in the middle. All are painted, rather unsettlingly, in black.
The cavernous, elongated room looks like the aisle of a plane, with a strip-lit corridor flanked by numbered pods stacked two or three high, bunk bed style. You can request top or bottom in advance (I’m on top).
There are no windows – all sealed off to drown out noise and accommodate Piccadilly Circus’ famous wraparound billboards – but it’s not exactly restful.
I’ve stayed in pod hotels in Tokyo and Tel Aviv and enjoyed the experience (both had tiny porthole windows), but this feels different — dystopian, unsettling, and a bit like a morgue.
Having done the pod thing before, I know what I’m in for. But as I roll up the shutters and haul myself in, I realise just how minuscule the space really is.
It is the exact dimensions of a single bed (in that respect, you’re treated to a Hypnos mattress and Egyptian cotton sheets), and there is a light, one pillow, a duvet, two hooks, a small shelf and a socket to charge my phone.
I’m 5ft 4, and I can just about sit up straight.
When I send a picture to my friends, one replies that it looks like a transit van.
Each pod is equipped with a personal air conditioning unit and high-speed WiFi. Purely for sleeping after a Christmas party or a work night out, it’s surprisingly comfortable.
But if you are any way claustrophobic, once the shutters are down, no amount of doom scrolling will distract from the feeling of being entombed.
The next morning, rested if a little disorientated, I emerge from my sarcophagus and make my way through a maze-like warren of corridors for a shower.
The bathrooms are communal and basic, much like those you find in a gym. I’ve definitely used worse, but the sour smell lingering in the air encouraged me to wash quickly and beat a hasty retreat to the office.
Would I stay in a capsule hotel again?
Yes, for the right price. Generally, that ranges from £30 to £65, and given the exorbitant rates in London these days, not to mention the rocketing costs of Ubers, it’s hard to pass up.
As we publish, this is the booking calendar for December and January (note that dynamic pricing drives the cost of a New Year’s Eve stay above £100).
I’d advise staying in one, if all you need is a bed for the night.
But next time, I’ll wait to shower in the office.
Alice Murphy was a guest of Zedwell Hotels, but don’t expect us to sugarcoat anything – our reviews are 100% independent.
