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 Airport naps as innovation 

Sleep pods are becoming increasingly common at airports

That is good news for travellers. But there are reasons for airports to resist

IN THEORY, overnight air travel should be wonderfully convenient. Instead of booking a hotel for the night and losing a day, travellers simply sleep while they fly. In reality, sleeping on a plane is hard, and at an airport tougher still. The chairs in terminals, nobody’s idea of comfort to begin with, tend to have armrests that make splaying out unfeasible. Even in business-class lounges, travellers contort themselves into impossible shapes to pretend that workspace desks are actually beds.

But soon there may be less need for such acrobatics. Sleep pods are coming to more and more airports. Last month, Washington Dulles International put out a call for proposals for a company to provide “a quiet and comfortable place within the airport to sleep, relax, or work while waiting to board a flight”. Mexico City’s airport has just added sleep pods with a space-age design for $30 a night. YotelAir, which offers pods in Amsterdam, London and Paris, is a touch more expensive at $42 for four hours. Dearer still is Minute Suites, which has operations in three American airports with a fourth coming later this year. Its prices start at $32 an hour. NapCity, which is yet to sign its first lease, will charge $45 for the first hour and a slightly lower rate after that.

The concept is not new. Japan opened its first capsule hotels in the late 1970s. But today sleep pods seem to be on the verge of conquering Western airports. And they have taken on a distinctly Western style, leaving behind the Asian model—often little more than a mattress and the minimum requisite space for a human body. Some have televisions and charging stations and sell items such as toothbrushes.

That is great news for flyers. But the bigger question for the future of sleep pods is whether they make sense for airports.

One concern may be revenue. Airports generally take a cut of the money that retailers in the terminal make. That is by no means pocket change. The founder of one capsule hotel company told Bloomberg that a single seat in a restaurant can generate $20,000 a year. It is unclear whether sleeping pods, even the most-compact of which take up the space of a couple of restaurant seats, will generate returns that big. And so airports may think twice before giving up room to them.

Airports also may be wary of creating new competition for nearby hotels. They enjoy a good relationship with these hotels, which offer lodging for airline crews and stranded passengers, and send shuttles to and from the airports. Hoteliers would surely balk if airports cosied up to their cheaper and more-convenient rivals.

But travellers are willing to do a lot for a good night’s sleep. Take, for example, the new bus service that runs from Los Angeles to San Francisco, which Gulliver recently reported on. It goes out of its way to take longer so that passengers can get eight hours of rest. Whether airports will be equally willing to let its customers get some shut-eye remains to be seen.

Airport operators and security teams will be most interested in the technological services of contest winner Alitheon, but being able to grab a bit of shut-eye when you’re stuck at the airport ranks high on most every traveler’s wish list.

The self-contained, plug-in Sleepbox units are just as their name describes: efficiently designed 45-square-foot boxes with a window to the outside and, inside, a bed, storage space for carry-on luggage, a wireless stereo system, fold-down work table, wall mirror, lighting and electrical outlets. Units come in three sizes: basic (“InnerSpace”), single or double.

“We think we have a solution that can eliminate one of the worst airport experiences,” said Peter Chamber, Sleepbox chief operating officer and co-founder.

The original design called for the unit to have self-changing sheets, with a new set unwinding from a bed-linen roll out after each use. And while Chambers still likes that idea, the current design has an attendant doing clean-up duty.

Positive reaction and a flurry of “We need this now!” press coverage in response to a prototype Sleepbox set up for three months in 2011 at Sheremetyevo International Airport in Moscow and success with a hotel-use set-up in Stockholm convinced the creators they had a good idea.

Of course, they aren’t the first to have it.

Frequent travelers may remember Laptop Lane from the late 1990s. The company rented fully equipped private mini-offices with desks, computers, Wi-Fi, walls and locking doors in, eventually, about two dozen airports nationwide. While these units didn’t have beds, they were often rented by travelers who needed a place to nap.

For a short time in the 2000s, stylish sleep pod chairs from Metro Naps, with special sleep music and a gentle wake-up program of lights and vibrations, were available to weary travelers at Vancouver International Airport.

Prices and stay requirements vary for each style of napping nook, but today travelers will find sleeping cabins by NapCabs in both Munich Airport and Berlin-Tegel Airport in Germany, GoSleep sleeping pods in the Abu Dhabi and Dubai airports and Minute Suites — equipped with daybed sofas, HDTV (that can be used as a computer) and work tables — in Philadelphia International Airport, Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport and in Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.

The Yotel hotel chain also offers airport sleeping cabins with beds, work spaces, TV and private bathrooms (with showers) in London’s Heathrow and Gatwick Airports, in Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport and in Amsterdam Schiphol Airport.

Chambers believes there’s room for the Sleepbox concept in the airport (and hotel) napping market in the United States and says the company recently presented its proposal to install Sleepbox units in a former airport lounge at a major U.S. hub.

The Airport Shark Tank win offers Sleepbox needed exposure and credibility, said Chambers. “It’s always difficult getting a new idea into an airport, but being part of AAAE’s start-up accelerator program will help match us up with airports where we can pilot the project.”

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The busiest airports in the world

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No. 20: Bangkok International Airport; 55,892,428 passengers in 2016.  Getty Images

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Sleeping pod at Marhaba lounge Dubai International Airport Terminal 3. Image used for illustrative purpose

Mohammed Hasan Mustafa/Handout via Thomson Reuters Zawya

Quantum Lounge Gate Solution

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