The name on the hotel is not the address
Around Heathrow, hotel names are marketing and postcodes are geography. One hotel with Terminal 5 in its name is reached from the terminal without stepping outdoors, another stands over the county boundary, and a hotel named after the central terminals can sit on a lane in West Drayton. Drivers and navigation systems work from postcodes, and the airport is ringed by one way systems, perimeter roads and junctions laid out for coaches, where a single wrong turn can cost a full lap.
So after the hotel's name, the postcode is the most useful thing in a booking message. It decides the route, the arrival time Hester gives you and whether that time is kept. Four postcode districts cover most of the hotels guests stay in out here, and each has a character worth knowing. The airport hotels page sets the buildings out terminal by terminal; this is the same ground read by address.
TW6: inside the fence
TW6 is the airport itself. It covers the terminals, the central area between the runways, the cargo sheds, the perimeter roads and the hotels that stand on airport land: the hotel at the end of the covered walkway from Terminal 5, TW6 2GD, which a guest reaches without once stepping outdoors; the tower joined to Terminal 4 by an enclosed bridge on the south side, TW6 3AF; and, less obviously, the hotel on the airport side of the Bath Road, TW6 2AQ, whose door opens onto a public road but whose postcode is the airport's.
A TW6 postcode tells a driver to think in terms of airport roads, which are signed for terminals and car parks rather than for hotels, so the hotel name has to travel with the code or the driver is left guessing. Everything on the Heathrow perimeter page sits in this district, and so do the central hotels described under Terminals 2 and 3.
UB3: Hayes and the middle of the row
Cross the Bath Road to the north side and you are in UB3, the Hayes district. Three large hotels stand along that stretch and every one of them carries a Bath Road, Hayes address: the one built round a covered courtyard, the one whose conference floors fill up from Stockley Park, and the grandest of the three once you are through the door. The district runs north through Harlington to Hayes itself and its station, Hayes and Harlington, where the Elizabeth line brings anybody out from town when the motorway has given up.
UB3 is the easiest of the four for a driver: the hotels face the main road, their entrances are signed from it and the run from the M4 is short. The one trap is that a newer and smaller hotel up at the junction four interchange also has a Hayes address and sits nowhere near the Bath Road, so a UB3 postcode on its own does not mean the hotel row. Send the name over the door and the road it stands on with it, always.
UB7: West Drayton and the villages
UB7 is the West Drayton district, and it takes in the villages along the airport's northern and western edges: Sipson, Harmondsworth, Longford and West Drayton itself. The big hotel at junction four on Sipson Road is UB7, and so are the hotel on Stockley Road, the one on Cherry Lane that carries the central terminals in its name from a West Drayton address, and the hotel standing where the Bath Road reaches Longford.
It is the most varied of the four. A UB7 hotel may sit on a motorway interchange, on a lane with open ground beside it or in a village with one road through it, and the drive to each is different. West Drayton station, on the Elizabeth line, is the rail fallback for this side, a short ride from most of these doors.
SL3: over the county line
Go west past the end of the airport and the postcode changes letters entirely. SL3 is a Slough district, and it covers Colnbrook and Poyle, which are in Berkshire rather than Greater London. The four-star on Poyle Road, SL3 0FF, carries Terminal 5 in its name, and so do a budget hotel beside it and several more spread between Colnbrook and Poyle, and every one of them is a short drive from the terminal, not a stroll.
For a driver coming out of London, SL3 means staying on the motorway longer and coming in from the M25 side by Poyle, which is where many of the evening delays on this side of the airport gather. Give the SL3 postcode and the route is planned for it. Give only the terminal and the car may end up on the wrong side of the field, looking at the right hotel across a runway.
Getting it right in the first message
Send the hotel's full name and its full postcode, both copied from the hotel's own confirmation rather than from memory. Hester passes them on exactly, works the drive out from them and gives you an arrival time she expects to keep. If you are staying in a private house or a rented flat instead, the same applies, with the name on the door. Evenings at your airport hotel run three hours from £700 in whichever of the four districts you are in; the postcode changes the route, never the figure, and she is paid on arrival, by hand, the confirmed figure and no other.
Samanta works Terminal 5 and Poyle Road and genuinely enjoys explaining that a hotel five minutes from the terminal stands in another county. Cindy knows UB3 from the station to the hotel row. Tina takes the central terminals and Cherry Lane, and points out the name over the door of that West Drayton hotel nearly every time she goes. Samanta and Cindy are both on the slim and slender tag. If you want to know what happens when a wrong postcode or the motorway costs her time anyway, the lateness guide sets it out. The one common address outside the four is Cranford village at the eastern end, which is TW5, the Hounslow side.
Filed under: most of the names in this piece also sit under late twenties in the by tag.