An ideal start to your holiday (Hilton Hotel Gatwick)

Name: aljones

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Product:	Hilton Hotel Gatwick
Date:	01/12/06 (116 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Close to the airport, not over priced, very clean

Disadvantages: No views

We decided to make things easy for ourselves for our main 2006 holiday, by staying at the Gatwick Hilton the night before our flight. And it was a good choice. As we drove in to the hotel, first impression were all good. They had doormen in the 'drop-off' car park directing you to an available space offering to help with luggage etc., so no complaints there. We walked in to find the lower ground floor in the middle of redevelopment, with scaffolding poles in some areas. But we needn't have worried. Up the escalator we went to the Lobby area and again first impressions were good. We had a short 2 or 3 minute wait for a receptionist to become available (this was at about 4pm on a Saturday). The receptionist was very pleasant and polite, confirmed our room booking and our HHonours and Virgin Frequent Flyer details were all on the system, and handed us our room key on the first floor.

Up to our room, and again, no problems there. It certainly wasn't the biggest hotel room I'd ever stayed in, but was perfectly OK for the two of us and the one night we were staying there. Everything was clean and tidy and how it should be, though there were a few signs of wear and tear, but nothing more than you would expect for an airport hotel with a high guest turnover. The view was non existant, we could see the short-stay multi-storey car parks, and the planes flying over the top of them! Well, to be fair we weren't expecting much more, with a hotel this close to the airport, the view were never going to be of green fields were they! Once we had settled, I left my wife to enjoy the TV while I went and parked the car in the NCP Flightpath long stay car park. This meant I returned to the hotel via the covered walkway from the aiports South Terminal.

The walk from the terminal isn't a short one, probably about 5 minutes for the average person, and leads you through a series of suspended walkways over roads, then between the short stay car parks, and over the bridge to the hotel.

We decided not to sample the high-priced food at the hotel, and instead made our way over to Garfunkels in the North Terminal for a nice meal, and McDonalds at the South Terminal the following morning for breakfast.

We had a good night sleep, the bed was comfy and we heard very little noise from neighbouring rooms or the corridor outside. Checkout was quick and easy, we just dropped our key in the box at the bottom of the lifts, and made our way to the terminal to check-in for our flight. I'd recommend this hotel to anyone who asked. It isn't perfect, but was is? It does the job well though, and while you will be paying more for the convienience (and the fact that its a Hilton), its not much more expensive than an offsite Travelodge+parking deal (I think we would have saved about £20), so for us made sense. It made the morning of the flight far more relaxing as you only had a short walk to the terminal, rather than having to drive from the hotel to a car park, then fight to get on a shuttle bus to the terminal.

Summary: An ideal hotel to stay in the night before you fly or when you arrive back