I decided it would be best to sleep at a Heathrow (LHR) hotel the night before a 6am flight from Terminal 2.  A search through Heathrow’s website didn’t show any hotels serving T2, but then I saw a video from one of the aviation bloggers I follow, of planes landing and taking off at LHR, and the author said the film was taken from the Hilton Garden Inn at T2.  I went to Hilton’s website and still struggled to find the hotel.  The hotel is a very recent opening, which might account for its anonymity.  But eventually I found the hotel and I booked a King Room High Floor with runway views for the Hilton Honors member rate of £146.30 room only.  There’s no point paying for breakfast when I was planning to check out at 4am!

I phoned the hotel the day before to get directions to it from the central Heathrow Express station, but I was given inaccurate information, so here’s how to find it:  Head to the arrivals level of Terminal 2. Outside is a crossing point to the car parks, bus and train stations and lifts serving them. On the far left side, enter the carpark and walk straight across it, where you’ll find the hotel entrance.  It’s not the most impressive way to arrive at a hotel, but there aren’t any steps to climb (if you have luggage) because there’s a ramp all the way from the carpark entrance to the hotel lobby.

When we entered we found the building to be uncomfortably warm, and this continued into our bedroom, so we immediately activated the aircon, but it took more than an hour for our room to become comfortable.  The ‘runway views’ I’d booked were indeed there, but it was dark, so plane-spotting was limited. The hotel glazing was totally effective at blocking out aircraft noise, thanks to more than a foot between the panes of glass!

The room had a wide superking bed, a writing desk, some occasional furniture and an unnecessarily massive TV on the wall.

The bathroom was quite compact, with just one wash basin and a toilet, but the walk-in shower cubicle was spacious. Though I had great difficulty getting the shower to work next morning. It was more a drizzle than a rain shower and temperature control was haywire.  Toiletries supplied were unbranded, small and not good quality, which is par for the course at this level of hotel.

We visited the top floor bar, but they didn’t do food, so we went to the 1st floor bar instead.  Everywhere was still very warm.  The food and the eating conditions (temperature) didn’t appeal, so we decided to walk over to T2 to buy some supplies from M&S.  Our supplies included mineral water because I was horrified to see in our room that only a small 330ml bottle of water had been provided.  That’s just unacceptable for 2 adults to share, in a warm, dehydrating hotel room!

We did manage to sleep quite well because the bed was very comfortable and supportive, but we were very dehydrated when our alarms woke us just before 4am.

If we had been travelling to LHR from home we would have had to get up just after 2am, so staying at the Hilton Garden Inn served its purpose of giving us an extra while to sleep.  Everything was new and clean.  The shower workings, the hotel aircon and the unbelievably slow lifts (one full minute for the doors to close) need to be sorted out promptly.  And please give us more water!

Overall score 3/10