Andrew Palmer checks into London's answer to the Japanese capsule hotel — and discovers it isn't just for gap-year backpackers with more energy than sense.


Ever since I saw these advertised for Japan on a travel programme many years ago, I've always wanted to try one. I wasn't disappointed — although there are a few things worth knowing before you book.

Capsule pods have landed in London as an affordable way to stay in the capital, and I decided to try one for myself. The hotel in question is Otherwander, which opened its doors on Dean Street in June and which prefers to call its capsules "nests" — presumably on the grounds that "pod" sounds a little too much like something you'd find on a spaceship, even though that's precisely what it resembles.

Yes, they are bijou — compact would be generous in places — but they are exceptionally clean, and everything you could want is there from the moment you slide into your nest: water bottles to refill, slippers, towels, a kimono, air conditioning, reading lights, and an efficiency that borders on the smug. Getting dressed is a small matter of logistics rather than a real obstacle: you can manage it lying down in the nest itself or stepping out to the communal area if you'd rather have room to swing a cat. Some might find the former a touch claustrophobic, though most of us survive changing in aeroplane toilets, so a nest with blackout blinds and actual air conditioning is hardly a hardship. Blackout blinds and sound-softened walls mean the pulse of Soho stays resolutely outside, which, for a light sleeper travelling alone, is worth more than most five-star turndown services.

The communal hub Photo: Otherwander

The communal hub Photo: Otherwander

If you assumed the experience was strictly the preserve of backpackers and twenty-somethings, think again. During my stay there was a proper mix of ages, not all travelling solo — though a word of warning: if you're sharing a twin nest and need the bathroom in the night, climbing past your neighbour without waking them requires a diplomacy most of us left behind in university halls. Solo travellers get the better end of that particular bargain, with singles available for guests who'd rather not negotiate a ladder at 3am.

The whole operation runs on a QR-coded "Wanderpass" tucked into your phone wallet, which gets you through the front door, up to your floor, and into your nest without a key, a card, or a conversation — handy if, like me, you'd rather not make small talk before coffee. It sounds like the sort of thing that could go catastrophically wrong the moment your phone dies, but in practice it worked without a hitch, and there were plenty of staff on hand for anyone whose technology had other ideas.

It is, refreshingly, exactly what it says on the tin. Safety and security are handled with the same code you'll come to know rather well — Wanderpass gets you through the gates and into your nest, with a courteous automated voice bidding you welcome or farewell each time, which felt faintly reassuring at midnight when everything else in Soho was still going strong.

The cleverest bit of engineering, though, is the bar. Nobody's behind it. Everything is self-service, which begs an obvious question: how does an unstaffed bar know you're old enough to be there? The answer is an app called Yoti, which sizes up your face rather than your ID before the tap will pour so much as a lager. Being carded by a screen rather than a bored student on a Friday shift takes some getting used to, but it does the job, and nobody's left hovering about waiting for a member of staff to appear.

Four in five of the 566 nests are single-berth, about the width of a single bed; the rest are built wider, for couples or friends who don't mind getting rather better acquainted. Each one comes with LED lighting you can set to whatever colour suits your mood, which does more than you'd think to stop the whole thing feeling like a filing cabinet with a mattress in it.

The bathrooms are communal but immaculately kept, closer to a spa than a hostel, with individual rain-shower cubicles, proper vanity areas, and no shortage of shower gel. Corridors are well signed, and the ground floor opens into a generous communal hub where guests can help themselves to coffee, pastries and a self-service bar — a genuinely useful spot for solo travellers who fancy company without having to seek it out. The same space doubles as proper workspace during the day: laptop, plug socket, room to hold a meeting, rather than just somewhere to eat toast.

One small worry did nag at me: what if I got up in the night, shuffled off half-asleep, and the door swung shut behind me with my phone — my only key — still on the pillow? I placed mine each night with something close to ceremony, just in case. I needn't have bothered. Night staff can let you back into your own nest remotely, which is one fewer thing to lose sleep over.

Location does a fair amount of the heavy lifting too. Ninety-two Dean Street sits a few minutes from Tottenham Court Road and the Elizabeth line, with Soho's theatres, restaurants and rather too many temptations on the doorstep. It's built, in the words of Otherwander's chief executive Fredrik Korallus, around "a comfortable night's sleep, and exceptional value" rather than the frills you'd pay for and never use — and with rates from £50 a night in central London, that's not a bad trade.

It's a place that suits far more purposes than the marketing might suggest. Fancy a couple of nights for the BBC Proms in the height of summer, without paying central London hotel prices for the privilege of sleeping through most of the day? Otherwander does that. Starting a family adventure and want everyone under one roof without remortgaging for it? It does that too. Even a group of old friends squeezing in a couple of days in London — mothers and daughters, fathers and sons — can each have a nest of their own, rather than drawing straws over who gets the sofa bed.

The nests themselves come stacked, bunk-style, so you'll want to establish early on who's climbing and who isn't. Those of us who no longer bound up ladders with quite the enthusiasm of our twenties can request a floor-level pod; the more supple, or those simply feeling nostalgic for a childhood cabin bed, are welcome to the top bunk and the small triumph of getting into it without incident.

The same logic applies well beyond a family weekend. Catch the last bus or train back from Glyndebourne after a long evening of opera and there's a familiar dread waiting at the other end: an eye-watering taxi fare, or a hotel booked in a panic at ten o'clock at night. A nest in Soho solves that particular problem for the price of a decent dinner, and does the same for anyone travelling in for the Proms, Wimbledon, a Six Nations weekend or a first night at the theatre. For those coming down from other parts of the country rather than living on London's doorstep, that's not a minor convenience — it's the difference between an evening out being viable at all.

Checkout isn't until ten, which turns out to be one of the quieter joys of the whole stay. There's time enough to get up, get dressed without racing the clock, and wander out for a proper breakfast at a local café before heading to the station — or, for anyone with an early meeting to make, before the sort of expensive, bleary-eyed rush-hour train that catching from Yorkshire, Lancashire or the North East, at the crack of dawn would otherwise demand. A late checkout sounds like a small thing until you've weighed it against a 5am alarm and a train fare to match.

Safe, secure, communicative and good value: on the evidence of one night, the capsule hotel has grown up. Whether the rest of London follows suit remains, appropriately enough, a tight squeeze.




Andrew Palmer stayed at the Otherwander Soho,located on Dean Street, adjacent to the Elizabeth line entrance at Tottenham Court Road station.
Accommodation includes single pods for solo travellers and double pods for couples or friends.

Pod features include: premium bedding, blackout window, sound-softened walls, luggage storage, USB charging ports, and superfast Wi-Fi

Shared facilities include spa-quality bathrooms with rain showers, touch-free taps, and toxin-free toiletries, plus dedicated vanity areas with hair dryers.

Social spaces include on-demand vending (coffee, pastries, snacks) and a self-serve bar with beers, wines, and cocktails

Sustainability is integrated throughout the building, including multi-stage filtered water systems to reduce single-use plastics and smart sensors that optimise energy use by powering down spaces when not in use

Prices start from £50 per night

To discover more and book your stay, click here.