London airport to open Japanese-inspired 'yotel'

LONDON -- Inspired by Japanese capsule hotels, a new type of airport hotel is opening in London in September.

The Yotel -- www.yotel.com -- will offer a cubicle with a double bed, desk, TV, private bathroom and free wireless Internet access. The rooms can be booked for four hours starting at about $44 or overnight for around $70.

There will be 40 Yotel cabins at Terminal 4 in Heathrow and 50 inside Gatwick's South Terminal, according to the company's spokeswoman, Andrea Wait.

The rooms will be about 108 square feet with beds about 6 1/2 feet long. They are designed for passengers who want to rest or work if they arrive early for a meeting or have a few hours to kill between planes, or if they want to spend the night at the airport before an early morning flight.

Another Yotel is planned for central London in 2007. The company intends to expand through a franchising system to other cities around the world.

The concept was partly inspired by Japanese capsule hotels, which are inexpensive sleeping berths built into plastic cubicles that are sometimes described as "coffin-like." The capsules are typically rented by businessmen or travelers who need a quick night's sleep and can do without hotel amenities.

Japanese capsule hotels usually have nothing more than a pull-down screen at the foot of the bed to cordon them off from other patrons; guests are advised to bring ear plugs if they don't want to hear snores from other capsules. In contrast, Yotel cabins are billed as soundproof with solid lockable doors.

Other hotels have also started offering small budget rooms that look like ship's cabins and are designed for travelers who need little more than a bed. At The Pickwick Arms Hotel in New York -- www.pickwickarms.com/podrooms.php -- the new "Pod Rooms" start as low as $109, while easyHotel -- www.easyhotel.com -- has rooms in London, and Basel, Switzerland, for as little as $65-$70, although many of them are windowless and you have to pay extra for TV reception.