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In a new series, Rooms Without Views, our experts spend the night in windowless hotel rooms to see if the price is worth sacrificing sunlight.
You can still make out the words ‘Male Hospital 1912’ over the door of the Edwardian red-brick at 91 Dean Street.
But today, the building that once welcomed patients to one of the world’s first sexually transmitted disease clinics offers a rather different kind of hospitality.
Otherwander Soho opened this month as London’s newest capsule hotel, with 563 pods, all measuring two metres long.
Billed as a bougier take on the classic pod concept, towels, slippers, and a kimono are included in the nightly rate (from £50 per night).
There’s even mini Moëts in the vending machine.
But the real USP is the promise of a ‘seamless, frictionless stay’.
You can enter, use, then leave the building without encountering sunlight or human contact.
Sounds… dystopian. But could it be the future of budget travel?
A few hours before check-in, an email arrives with my ‘Wanderpass’, a QR code designed to open everything during your stay.
And sure enough, standing on Dean Street, I hold it to the reader on the door and I’m in, to a decidedly sterile white room with a huge screen, pulsating with colour.
From the off, this is a downside for me, because I spend every minute worrying that I will either forget my phone, or that it will run out of battery.
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Described as a ‘staffless hotel’, I am surprised, then, to be greeted by three pleasant young staff, one of whom gives me a short spiel about the place.
Briefing complete, I scan my QR code on a row of airport-style e-gates and breeze through to the ground floor, a lobby-cum-work space with tables, benches, and a bookshelf (titles from Paul Theroux and Bill Bryson, a human touch).
Along the back wall are several vending machines where guests can buy everything from shaving foam and toothpaste to playing cards, premixed cocktails, and miniature bottles of Champagne (£20 a pop).
An app uses facial recognition tech to make sure customers are not underage.
There’s also a coffee station and breakfast boxes to set you up for the day. Naturally, at a cost.
Later, I realise I have forgotten my toothbrush, so I nip down for a dental kit. Alas, out of stock.
In the stairwell, warm orange lighting provides a futuristic but admittedly calming feel.
So I am disappointed when I emerge on the second floor to a clinical and soulless grey corridor.
No paintings. No posters. Just… grey. Nothing human here.
Upstairs, the hotel features 563 pods or ‘nests’, as Otherwander optimistically calls them.
The vast majority of these are single-berths, just 90cm wide, while the rest are doubles (140cm wide).
The pods are stacked on top of the other, with three narrow steps to the second tier and half-doors that lock when you pull them behind you.
I can’t recommend it for anyone with accessibility issues or, indeed, a bad back.
After unlocking number 2613 with my trusty QR, I am impressed by the touches that do genuinely elevate this place above the rest.
There are clothes hooks, slippers and two kinds of charging sockets (USB and C).
Beside my two pillows, a duvet and a stiff black kimono bagged in fabric (not plastic). On the wall, a panel with choices for LED lighting.
At 5’4, I can easily kneel without banging my head, but I wouldn’t fancy sharing my double with another person.
If you’re not claustrophobic, though, it’s not so bad.
Despite being in the heart of Soho, I sleep soundly. Without natural light or a change in temperature to wake me up, I snooze through to my alarm.
The communal bathrooms are bright and spacious, the showers excellent by the standards of this type of hotel.
Though if you’re going to have Moet in the vending machines, it seems a miss not to have conditioner (only shampoo and body soap is provided).
Applying skincare in the morning, I get chatting to a 30-something up for work from Cornwall.
She moved there during the pandemic, she tells me, but kept her job in the city. ‘I can just about do it a few nights a month, in places like this.’
When I tell her about my toothbrush, she gives me a floss stick and a mint.
Otherwander may be banking on the appeal of a ‘fully digital…frictionless stay’.
Call me a luddite, but the human touch will always be the best part.
Alice Murphy was a guest of Otherwander Soho, but don’t expect us to sugarcoat anything – our reviews are 100% independent.
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