The Travel Critic

Right, so here’s the thing: airport hotels should be crap. That is their function. They are not meant to be destinations, they are meant to be purgatory. They should exist in that peculiar hinterland of travel where you’ve left your home but not yet arrived anywhere, and so deserve a night in a building that looks like it was designed by someone who only ever watched Prisoner: Cell Block H. They should have nylon curtains in a shade of “nicotine grey” that you strongly suspect have not been laundered since before the Berlin Wall came down. The receptionist should look like someone who resents you personally for reminding them of their catastrophic GCSE results. The mattress should be a troubling topography of springs and stains, and the bathroom should be the kind of thing that, when browsing Rightmove, you think: “No, sorry, that has to go. Bulldozer at dawn.”

But then you arrive at the Moxy at Cologne Airport. And it’s… good. Which is, frankly, deeply wrong.

The first sign of its heresy: check-in is not in some miserable little cubicle under flickering strip lights but at the bar. On the fifth floor. Which means you can basically stagger from bed to boarding gate with a Negroni in hand, and it feels less like travel admin and more like joining a private club. The staff smile at you, which is unnerving. They appear to like being there, which only deepens your sense that something here is amiss.

The rooms are modern, clean, stylish. None of that “IKEA catalogue left in the rain” feel you expect from an airport bed factory. The sheets are white, not “off-white”, and the mattress doesn’t try to communicate its tragic life story the moment you lie down. The bathrooms are things you would actually use rather than tiptoe into wearing rubber gloves, and—God help me—you sort of want to stay longer than you need to.

And that’s the problem. An airport hotel shouldn’t seduce you. It should punish you for your late-night flight booking. It should be a rite of passage, a warning, a deterrent. This place, instead, is far too good. Clean lines, clever touches, a bit of a buzz about it.

I don’t know what’s wrong with the Moxy Cologne Airport. It’s breaking the rules. Airport hotels are supposed to be grim, grey, and grumpy. This one is bright, welcoming, and borderline enjoyable. If every airport hotel were like this, I’d never go home at all.