Sinful Sunday: Airport Hotels

At six o’clock on Friday morning, I flew to Marrakech for the weekend. The early flight necessitated either catching a bus from Central London in the middle of the night, or holing up for a few hours in the airport Radisson; despite the additional expense, I was always going to choose the latter.

Is that mainly because I place a disproportionately high value on a decent night’s sleep? Perhaps…but alongside any practical considerations sat one compelling, indisputable fact: airport hotels are sexy.

Actually, airports are sexy full-stop. Maybe not always – at their worst, they can be dull, dreary, depressing, or a mixture of the three – but pass through one on the right day, in the right mood, for the right reason, and they positively hum with the promise of desire soon to be fulfilled.

The hotels attached to them are even more of a tease. Their bars host a heady mix of bored business travellers, giddy holidaymakers, and those left in limbo by cancelled flights or lengthy layovers. Most airports sit miles away from the cities they serve; the hotel guests constitute a captive audience, penned in and forced to find their own entertainment. Looking down on the main bar from my room at the Stansted Radisson, I watched strangers strike up conversation; saw work colleagues gradually shift laptops to one side and huddle closer over their drinks, bathed in pools of soft yellow light.

They’re not for everyone, but to me there’s something romantic about that kind of casual, transient hook-up. Meeting someone as you’re passing through, then flying off in different directions the next morning; your lives briefly illuminated by the few hours you spend together behind a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign and thick, soundproof curtains.

Maybe I’ve just watched Up In The Air too many times.

I didn’t venture down to the bar on Thursday night. Instead I lounged naked in my room with a bottle of wine and a good book. I put aside all cares and worries, and gave myself over to gleeful anticipation of the following morning’s flight; of a first trip to Africa; of the thrill of the new.

Airport hotels are sexy. Sometimes you don’t even need another person to help make them feel that way.

(Many thanks to the super-talented Oleander Plume for one again turning my mediocre attempts at photography into something approaching art!)