I had two recent stays at this hotel. On the first night I arrived late from London and had a little trouble finding the property. This was primarily because the signs from the airport are useless, but also because there are limited ways of crossing the road in to the parking structure and because a lot of escalators and stairs were out of action. The hotel web site says it is about a 10 minute walk, but in the end it took me 15-20 to get there. There are moving walkways for the most of the distance, although more than half were out of action. It is easiest to leave Terminal 3 to walk to the hotel.

Endless corridors like this en-route to the hotel:

At the end of the corridors you can see the hotel through the windows, and must take a lift or stairs down to the ground floor for check in.

There is a covered walkway in case of rain:

There is plenty of seating in Reception:

At check-in there was a short queue, and a manned Hilton HHonors desk where I waited about 10 minutes whilst the guest in front asked every conceivable question of the staff. I had been up for a good 18 hours at this point and I was not amused.

I had booked a standard room and the agent confirmed that they had provided me with an upgrade to an Executive Room on the 5th floor. The lifts are a two minute walk from the front desk.

The 5th floor is the Executive floor and the lounge is located just off the lift lobby.

The hotel has a central axis with four corridors, each differently coloured, leading from the central area. I was on the red corridor:

The room was comfortable, reasonably sized and I slept well as there was no noise from the airport.

The tub was large and there was a shower. Oddly there was a red alarm cord, presumably in case of emergency. Next morning I woke to a view of the motorway, although no noise.

Executive Lounge

The lounge, which is unmanned for most of the time, offers a good selection of hot and cold breakfast items.

The cold items tasked better than the hot, but it was enough before my flight.

There were plenty of seats and no wait to sit down:

The TV had either CNN or BBC on most of the time I was there. The coffee machine was self service and there was a cooler with soft drinks that you could help yourself too all day.

At checkout the staff arranged for their shuttle to take me to Terminal 5, where my United Airlines flight left to take me to Washington.

Suite

On my second stay I knew I would have longer (my arrival was at 10am and my departure the next day at 12 noon). When you make bookings with Hilton they often offer you the chance to upgrade at time of booking, based on availability at time of check-in. You pay only if your upgrade ‘clears’. For this stay I chose the EUR9 early check-in and the EUR29 Suite upgrade options. I reasoned that they were less likely to sell their suites and so might have one available for early check-in.

Just before I left Washington I had received an email to say that the hotel could NOT satisfy the early check-in request. I reconciled to sitting in the lounge for part of the day.

That morning I arrived at the hotel to see the check-in line across the foyer and outside to the kerb side. Luckily the HHonors check-in was manned and I queued there. It appeared that a flight had been cancelled and the airline was putting people up at the Hilton. Luckily they had a suite available, and I was quickly checked in.

In truth the Suite was a very large room, about twice the size of my previous room, with a large seating area, huge closet and larger bathroom.

It was pretty comfortable and once again I could use the Executive Lounge. The evening had a selection of hot and cold snacks (which I didn’t photograph as it was so busy). During the day I was able to pop up and secure soft drinks and coffees as needed without anyone arguing about taking them back to my room. Again I slept well and enjoyed breakfast the next morning.

All in all two good stays. If I needed a stopover again I would certainly stay here, especially as I now know my way from the airport.