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Day rooms

I’m not sure where this fits, but I thought I’d stick it here.

Like a lot of you I don’t sleep well while flying. And while I know that the official RS policy is just power through and keep going sometimes that doesn’t work. For me what works is taking a shower and having an hour or two nap - no more than two - and then I can go until about 10 PM that night and I’m on European time

For this trip, I knew there was a high risk I could not check into my hotel early. It was sold out the night before which meant that was a good chance my room would not be ready when I got there. I had heard about that Day use rooms. There’s a website with that name (one word I’m not going put it in here so this doesn’t look like a sales pitch) but I was a little concerned this wouldn’t really work.

So I booked the Holiday Inn express at the Charles de Gaulle airport that you didn’t have to pay for in advance for about €60. I took the little train at the airport to the hotel showed up and they had my reservation. It was the €60 I had expected. The room was great. I closed the curtains, took a shower, took an hour and a half nap got up and headed into Paris. I’ll do it again. 60 euros is a lot cheaper than my hotel in Paris was for an extra night had it even been available

I would recommend when you’re doing this to look to make sure that the hotel is close to the airport via some kind of airport transportation. There were several options that were very affordable, but I realized I would have to get a shuttle to the hotel, and that seemed to be too much work for me for this, considering I knew at this hotel airport they were Hotels where you could take the train. For example, there was an Ibis that was about €40 but then I realized it was about a 20 minute hotel shuttle and I decided I’d rather pay the €20 to stay on the airport property and not have to deal with that shuttle. They also had hotels that were all the way in Paris, which might be an option for some of you, but it was not what I was looking for for this trip.

Now I’m not going to guarantee this always works this way, but I will say since you don’t have to pay in advance for a lot of these hotels it’s a low risk plan. Note there are some you do have to pay in advance I also ruled those out because I just wasn’t sure this was going to work.

You can also call hotels directly, but I was looking for an easy method that didn’t involve me trying to call a bunch of hotels in Paris and get price quotes.

Posted by
2523 posts

Carol,
What a great idea! I can usually sleep on the flight over to Europe, 3 or 4 hours but upon arrival I still need a nap. I take no more than 2 hours to crash. Then I'm ready to stay up until 9 or 10 pm.
My June Switzerland trip is already booked but I may try this with my September trip!

Posted by
1185 posts

Carol, thank you so much for this information. At 60 euros for a nap and shower and then on to Paris to my lodging, what a deal! I never knew something like this existed.

Posted by
243 posts

Many airports have what they call transit hotels and have signs directing you there. I fly from the east coast and often land fairly early in the morning. I landed at Heathrow at 7:00 am. None of the sights opened much before 10 so I used the transit hotel for three hours before heading into the city. In Zurich, we stayed in the hotel for three hours during our 5 hour layover. I’ve found that powering through works if I land in the afternoon but if I land before 10, a two hour nap and a shower make me feel human again.

Posted by
674 posts

Thanks for this info, Carol. Much cheaper than upgrading to business class to sleep on the flight over, right? It’s always a slog for me since I never can sleep in planes to land, to get wherever, drop off luggage, keep moving until evening when you can legitimately call it a day and sleep.

Posted by
161 posts

Carol, this is great information. I had no idea! Thanks for posting this.

Posted by
3227 posts

Thanks Carol (and Kim for LHR). I didn’t know day rooms existed. This info is so very helpful!
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