During my five hour layover at Bahrain Airport, I spent most of my time at the Gulf Air Falcon Gold Lounge. However, I also checked out the Bahrain Airport Hotel, which offers some features for Priority Pass members, including sleep pods and massages.
Continue reading: Review: Bahrain Airport Hotel (Priority Pass)
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
Thank you for this Ben! Might you have an estimate of the bed's length? The pod itself looks kind of short, and bed length can be a challenge for many.
Wish you had checked out the rooms - If paying out of pocket, the surcharge of proper hotel rooms doesn't seem to be much comparing to sleeping pods. Can't they offer a room tour before deciding which to pay?
And overnight price is decidedly not cheap.
@ JakePB -- I don't have exact dimensions, but the bed was a bit more than six feet long, since I could be fully flat without touching the end.
@ Ethan -- There was typically only one person working the front desk, so it didn't seem like there was a practical way for anyone to show me a room. For what it's worth, the hotel's website has some photos of the room.
https://www.bahrainairporthotel.com.bh/galley/
They're definitely much more spacious.
What on earth is the story with the flooring in the hallways? It looks like the carpet has been torn up and the floor surfaces are rotting plywood or moldy concrete, covered with dirt, leaves and filth? Is that some faux desert -cammo-pattern carpet?
Claustrophia-related anxiety kicking in... though for people who are not me, it seems like a decent way to wall off the world for a few hours.
Did a therapist by the name of Kanya massage you, Ben? The back and shoulder massage I got at the spa a month ago was one of the best I've ever gotten!
Agree, realizing that a trip with all these stops like in pre-pandemic times would not have been executable until recently given all the travel restrictions. Good to be back to normal travel again! Missed these reports.
How is there 3 hour time for the sleeping pod defined ? Is it between check in one check out of the hotel or just the time in the pod itself?
Essentially I am wondering if you spent additional time in the gym or shower, would that count towards the three hour time limit ?
Hi Ben, do you know
1) if you have 2 Priority Passes (say from Chase + Citi Prestige), can you get both options?
2) does the gym and shower time count as part of your 3hr pod time?
@ Steve -- It's calculated from the time you check-in, and then you're expected to vacate within that timeframe. I can't say with certainty whether they'll hunt you down if you use the pod for three hours and then go to the gym after, but it seems the intent is that you spend up to three hours there total.
@ D3kingg -- Thanks, I appreciate it! 🙂 Always nice to hear when people enjoy these reviews, and makes them all the more fun to write.
Lucky - I gotta tell ya, you took one for the team on this one. I think claustrophobia would immediately kicked-in with me. Having grown up in the South, this is kinda like going into a cellar during a storm. Too tight and scary for me!!
Newly built terminals are expected to power back up, this place shouldn't be any different. You can always rely on your phone lighting.
Yet if this was Sharjah airs first class suite everyone would be rushing to spend 220k points to fly it for 9 hours!!!
Nice review! Love the ingenuity of this “lounge”. I do think it’s interesting that this is so cheap for what essentially looks like a first class suite in the air but is seen as tiny and claustrophobic on the ground. A first class cabin is probably just as noisy and does come with food and drink of course. Yet people want to only fly Air France first (as an eg) for something that would kind of suck as a hotel room on the ground.
Those sleep pods, they are the least an airline can pay for in hours of expected delays especially over night. There could be some in all airports and or nearby hotels with shuttle vans. Sometimes all a person needs is a mattress and walls to keep out others' snoring and the noise and eyes of the passerby public with a wake-up alarm or wake-time attendant. Though I think for flight delays, airlines with unknown delays or for families need to pay for full rooms, that's a necessity where a person or a family may be awaiting days or even several hours as a family unit, always separate pods or rooms for traveling business people of two or more to protect from work peer abuses and bigger spaces than pods for those not accepting of a tight space, that's a real concern. For say $20 Canadian, I would have paid for that pod space when I booked my own complicated travel, stayed awake in the airport over night without a fitting bench to lay on and with fear of sleeping through my next travel time anyhow. I was badly sleep deprived before and into arrival to my destination, that can be debilitating and dangerous, especially since travel is all built out of many service people, mobile machinery and complicated routing systems.
Not a chance will I try those sleep pods. Almost like being in an MRI machine. No thanks.
That shower looks a hundred million times better than the one in the GF lounge.
I was quite shocked with how bad the shower was in the GF lounge when I was there back in May, but hey, it's a shower. I'm not going to say that the shower in the lounge they use in FRA is much better.
That said, I'm not sure I would pay for this sleep pod experience given your comments. The GF lounge is quite nice indeed.
Just a FYI on the spa. There actually is a full treatment room there with a saloon.