The layover hotel that everyone dreads and the one everyone loves: the crew hotel review thread, no names, just cities
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#1 The crew hotel is chosen by the airline, not by us, and it decides half the layover. Every crew has a list of the good ones and the bad ones and the list is passed down in galleys. Let us write it down, by city, without naming the hotel, because the contracts change and because naming them is a policy problem.
The ones everyone loves
The hotel in a European capital where the crew floor has blackout curtains that actually black out, a gym that opens at 5am and a breakfast that runs until 11. The crew bid the route for the hotel.
The beach hotel on the leisure routes where the crew corner is away from the guests, the pool is quiet in the morning and the bar knows the per diem.
The Asian city hotel with the convenience store in the lobby, the laundry that returns the uniform in four hours and the room that is genuinely quiet.
The ones everyone dreads
The airport hotel in a city that is an hour from the airport hotel, where the only food is the hotel, the walls are paper and the crew corridor is next to the ice machine.
The hotel that was lovely five years ago and has a new owner and the crew rate now buys a room facing the car park.
The one with the mattress that every crew member describes with the same word, which I will not write here.
What makes a good crew hotel
Blackout. Quiet. A gym or a walk nearby. Food within ten minutes on foot. A front desk that knows the crew wake up calls are real. Laundry. And a crew floor, because crew on a guest floor at 3am body time are not good neighbours.
What the airline looks at
Price, mostly. Security. Distance from the airport. The crew feedback forms, which are read, occasionally, and which change hotels, occasionally. Fill them in. The hotel that improved at my airline improved because two hundred crew wrote the same thing.
Your city
One city, the thing that makes the hotel good or bad, no names. Let us build the list.
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#2 Singapore: the good one, with the laundry in four hours and the kaya toast round the corner. Miami: the dreaded one, an hour from anything, and the crew who bid Miami bid it for the beach and see the car park.
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#3 Melbourne: loved, a real city hotel with a walk to the river. A West African city I will not name: dreaded, for the mattress, and every Qatar crew member knows which one I mean.
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#4 Cancún: loved, the crew corner at the resort is quiet and the pool at 7am is ours. Orlando: tolerated, because the outlets are the walk and the hotel is a hotel.
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#5 Rome: the good one, with the walk to the centre and the coffee bar the crew have adopted. A US city I fly to on reserve constantly: dreaded, the ice machine hotel, the paper walls, and the food is the vending machine. Jim knows.
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#7 Buenos Aires: loved, the hotel is in the right neighbourhood and the crew who know it bid the route. A Central Asian city: dreaded for the food and loved for the sleep, which is the paradox of the small town night stop from the other thread.