What is it like staying in a capsule hotel?

I went to my first conference of the year this week, Higher Voltage. It was on Thursday at Battersea Power Station and I go to university near Russell Square on Wednesday evenings. There didn’t seem much point going home late at night, only to get on a very early train back again next morning so it meant something unusual happened: I had an overnight stay in London on my own.

I hadn’t done this since January 2020. I was looking for accommodation on Booking.com and a capsule hotel for £35 in Piccadilly Circus came up. £35!

I have stayed in a Premier Inn Hub in London before, where you have a bed and an en suite bathroom. It was much more expensive.

This version of a capsule hotel, from Zedwell, is beds in boxes in a corridor: you roll the shutter up, crawl in, then pull the shutter back down behind you.

While the rate is £35, they then ask on check-in if you’ll pay £5 to rent a towel (not a very big one but big enough. Definitely not fluffy though.) You can also buy a padlock from them so if you want to leave your bag in your pod/capsule/cocoon while you go out you have some peace of mind.

There are communal bathrooms with showers, much like on a campsite.

Inside your pod is a mattress, duvet and pillow. The headboard has a light, plug socket, USB socket, and switch for the air con/fan. I could put my glasses, earrings and water bottle on the headboard shelf next to the sockets and switches.

Once you’re inside, there’s a lock for the shutter.

I’m short, so my luggage could go at the end of the bed. I had a rucksack and coat with me (I was glad it had dried out after the rain or it would have dripped on the mattress.)

You have to leave your shoes outside your sleeping area as there’s nowhere to put them in the pod.

It got quite hot in the capsule, and the fan was noisy. But I did get some sleep.

Would I stay there again? Probably, yes. It’s right next to Chinatown and close to theatres. There are tube stations nearby. I resisted the urge to go late-night book shopping in Foyles on the way to check in.

It is a budget hotel and you get what you pay for, which in this case is not much. I could sit up on the bed, but I’m not sure how someone taller would have got on. You also need some flexibility to crawl around the space.

My main bugbear about the experience was that the toilet roll holders were rubbish, so didn’t dispense paper easily.