On this page (6 sections)
Which Crowne Plaza this is
Two hotels, one brand, and a name that barely separates them. Get this right before anything else, because they are on opposite sides of the airport and one of them is a walk from your gate while the other is a drive.
| Hotel | Where | Link to a terminal |
|---|---|---|
| Crowne Plaza London Heathrow T4 | On the airport, at Terminal 4 | Covered pedestrian bridge into T4 |
| Crowne Plaza London Heathrow | Stockley Road, West Drayton, UB7 9NA | None; paid shuttle or car, about 2 miles |
The letters T4 in the name are the discriminator, and they are doing a lot of work. The Terminal 4 hotel is the one most people mean when they search for a Crowne Plaza at Heathrow, and it is the only one of the four Terminal 4 walkway hotels that has not had its own page here until now. The Stockley Road hotel is a bigger, older, conference-led property that happens to be near the airport, and it is covered further down.
The Terminal 4 hotel and its covered bridge
The Crowne Plaza London Heathrow T4 is one of six hotels at the airport with a covered walkway into a terminal, and one of four clustered at T4. The link is a covered pedestrian bridge straight into the terminal, step-free and indoors, which puts check-in around 5 to 10 minutes from the room door with a case. On a 06:00 departure that is the whole argument for staying here rather than driving in, and it is worth more than the price gap against a Bath Road hotel suggests.
The hotel opened in 2018 and shares its building with the Holiday Inn Express London Heathrow Terminal 4, 304 rooms and 457 respectively for 761 between them. Both are IHG, both use the same bridge. The Crowne Plaza sits a tier above on room size and finish, and the Holiday Inn Express undercuts it with breakfast usually included. The other two in the cluster are the Premier Inn, consistently the cheapest, and the Hilton, the upmarket one with a pool and the longest internal walk of the four.
For a departure from another terminal, the cluster is better connected than it used to be understood to be. The Hotel Hoppa route HHL serves the Terminal 4 hotels and runs to Terminals 2, 3 and 5, at £7.00 single and £13.00 return, so a T5 or T2 flight from here is one shuttle rather than a shuttle plus an inter-terminal transfer. You will not need it for T4 itself; that is what the bridge is for.
Rooms and the Urban Brasserie
Rooms are air-conditioned and specified as a full-service four-star: a work desk, a 55-inch smart TV, free Wi-Fi, tea and coffee making and an in-room safe as standard. The hotel runs Quiet Zones, floors kept free of the usual corridor traffic, which is a sensible thing to have in a building attached to an airport terminal and worth asking for if you are sleeping before a long-haul.
Dining is the Urban Brasserie, which serves Mediterranean, Asian and modern British dishes and runs an Asian street-food counter alongside, with the Crowne Plaza Bar for a drink. It is a proper hotel restaurant rather than a captive-market counter, which matters here more than at a Bath Road hotel: you are on the airport, and once you are in the T4 cluster the alternative is the terminal's own landside offering or nothing. Check the closing time against your arrival if you are landing late, because an evening arrival into T4 followed by a shut kitchen is the common complaint at every hotel in this cluster.
Parking, and the height limit that catches people
Parking at the Terminal 4 hotel is £35 a day for guests, self-park, in a secure underground car park holding up to 125 vehicles. That is the most expensive parking in the Terminal 4 cluster and among the dearest hotel parking at the airport, where the spread runs from about £15 at the Sheraton Skyline to £40 at the Sofitel. Some third-party listings quote a much lower figure for this hotel; the £35 is the rate the hotel publishes itself, so treat the cheaper number as a package price from a reseller rather than the tariff at the barrier.
The detail that catches people out is the 2-metre height restriction on the underground car park. That excludes most vans, a lot of larger people carriers, and any car with a roof box fitted, which is exactly the vehicle a family drives to an airport hotel. If you are in one, sort the parking before you arrive rather than at the ramp. There is also the £7 drop-off charge per vehicle, which is the airport's drop-off charge rather than a hotel invention, and it applies to anyone dropping you at the door.
For a trip where the car stays behind for a week or more, £35 a night is the wrong product entirely. Price a park-and-fly bundle or a pre-booked Park & Ride space instead; the hotel and parking comparison sets the options against each other.
The other one, at Stockley Road
The Crowne Plaza London Heathrow without the T4 is a different proposition: a large, conference-led hotel at Stockley Road, West Drayton, UB7 9NA, roughly 2 miles from the airport near the M4 junction. It is not on the Bath Road, where much of the airport's hotel stock sits, and it is not within walking distance of anything at Heathrow. What it has that the Terminal 4 hotel does not is leisure and meeting space: a swimming pool, and 21 meeting rooms taking up to 200 guests.
Two things to know before booking it as an airport hotel. Parking is charged at £3 an hour up to 12 hours, then £16 per 24 hours, managed by a third-party operator, and guests on a parking-inclusive package have to register at reception or risk a charge. More importantly, the free shuttle here does not go to the airport. It serves the Stockley Park and Bedfont Lakes business parks, which tells you who this hotel is really built for. For the terminals, IHG points guests at the paid Hotel Hoppa, including on its Park, Stay and Go packages, so add that fare to the room rate or plan to drive. Treat the detail with care and confirm the pick-up when you book: IHG's transport copy for this hotel still refers to "Terminals 1, 2 and 3", and Terminal 1 closed in 2015, so the timings alongside it may be just as old. The Hoppa's own route list does not name this hotel either.
Who it suits, honestly
Book the Terminal 4 hotel if you are flying from T4 and want to walk to check-in: a Qatar Airways, Air France, KLM or Etihad departure at dawn is exactly the case it is built for, and the covered bridge is worth paying for. It also works for a late arrival into T4, where walking to a bed beats finding a taxi. Within the cluster, take it over the Holiday Inn Express when you want the bigger room and a real restaurant, and under the Hilton if you do not need a pool.
Look elsewhere if you are flying from another terminal and paying a premium for a walkway you will not use. From Terminal 5 the Sofitel is the equivalent hotel, and from Terminals 2 and 3 it is the Hilton Garden Inn. Look elsewhere too if you are driving a van or anything with a roof box, where the 2-metre limit is a real obstacle, or if you want a pool, which the Terminal 4 hotel does not have.
The honest summary is that you are buying the bridge. The room and the restaurant are good without being remarkable, the parking is dear and height-limited, and none of that matters much at 04:30 when the alternative is a taxi through west London.