What I Liked
- Well priced
- Good location. Next to the terminal building
- Well designed lobby
- Decent price
- Fitness Centre with swimming pool
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It’s all about the location! The Radisson Blu is the closest hotel to Stansted Airport. There’s just a car park between you and the terminal building.
It’s also a pretty good hotel. The Radisson Blu Stansted is a modern 4* hotel with a classy design. I enjoyed the food in the restaurant. They have a fitness centre with a swimming pool.
Even better, I got a pretty good price. £75 for one night.
Given that I had a 6am Ryanair flight. This was a good result!
I made sure to take loads of photos. Each photo can be clicked to open out the slideshow.
Let me be honest about the Radisson Blu Stansted for a second. I only paid £75 for the night.
The maths gets better when you weigh up the alternative. An Uber XL from my West London home would have been £140. At 2am. With two young kids in tow. No thanks. If you're still working out the best ways to reach Stansted, my guide lays out the cheaper options so you don't get stung like I nearly did.
Not everything was perfect, mind. Our room looked inwards, onto the Wine Tower Bar in the atrium, with no window to the outside world. I've got Gold Status with Radisson, so I quietly hoped for a better view. It didn't happen. But for the price, and a 3 minute walk to the terminal, I could live with it.
If you're doing the early-flight dash like I was, it's worth sorting the boring bits before you go. For getting the car sorted without the airport rip-off, the Purple Parking for UK Airport Parking deal is the one I actually use and trust.
I booked my family room for £75 for 1 night. I stayed as a family of four. I was also able to use some Radisson points I had towards the cost of the hotel. So I only paid £35 in cash.
I had a 6am Ryanair flight to Budapest in the morning. Eeek! The alternative was an 11am flight. A more leisurely morning, but a shorter holiday.
I chose the 6am flight. Given that I have two young children. I didn’t fancy taking a taxi at 2am. So the Radisson Blu Stansted was just the job. For comparison, an Uber XL would have cost £140 from my West London home.
Book your stay at the Radisson Blu Stansted here
If you're weighing up the park-and-fly maths, this is where the Radisson Blu Stansted earns its keep. You drop the car, walk three minutes across the car park to the terminal, and skip the 4am taxi entirely. That's the whole pitch.
I won't quote you a parking figure I didn't pay — rates shift with how long you leave the car, and I'd rather say nothing than make one up. But as a package it turned a brutal early start into something close to a lie-in. Which, with two young kids in tow, is worth more than any number.
The Radisson Blu Stansted is the closest hotel to the airport, full stop. A three-minute walk across a car park to the terminal, most of it under a covered walkway. The Holiday Inn Express and Hampton by Hilton sit nearby too, but neither is this close, and neither is this much of an upgrade — the Radisson is the more luxury pick of the bunch. Let's be clear about one thing though: this is an airport hotel, not a city break. The "local attractions" are the terminal and the runway.
The nearest actual town is Bishop's Stortford, about four miles out, a 10-minute drive, and a pleasant enough market town if you've got a spare morning. But nobody books a hotel three minutes from a Ryanair gate for the sightseeing. It's car parks, access roads, and the low hum of aircraft out here — which, at 4am with a flight to catch, is exactly where you want to be.
Now, if you're arriving from further afield, I always pre-book a taxi for hotel arrivals — less faff, especially with kids and luggage in tow. I use Welcome Pickups, which holds a 4.9? rating from over 45,000 reviews and covers cities worldwide. Yes, it costs more than the train or coach, but it's door to door, the price is fixed up front, and the driver is standing there waiting for you. When you've just landed and your brain is mush, that's worth every penny.
If London is your goal, you're roughly 40 miles from the centre — and the train is the fast way in. The Stansted Express runs straight to Liverpool Street in about 47 minutes, and the station sits right inside the terminal you can practically see from the hotel window. I book through Trainline for the best fares and no faff at the machine. The only catch is the bags — you'll be hauling them through the station and onto the platform yourself. For 47 minutes into central London, I'll take that trade every time.
I actually took a coach to the airport myself, and got dropped right in front of the terminal — a 10-minute walk from the coach stop to the hotel door. If you're not in a rush, it's the budget pick. Coaches run into central London too, though those take closer to 90 minutes once traffic gets involved, so it's slower than the train but noticeably kinder on the wallet. Book your coach with National Express here and you'll have a seat locked in before you set off.
The hotel impressed. A classy and modern hotel. The centre of the hotel was a large atrium. In the middle of the atrium is the Wine Tower Bar. You can see a photo of this in the above slideshow.
The Wine Tower Bar has a really cool design and vibe.
There’s also a fitness centre with a swimming pool. Open from 6am to 10pm. I didn’t get a chance to visit the Fitness Centre. I checked it at 9pm, and my flight was at 6am the next day However, it looks pretty good from the photos on the website.
Right now, it’s 11pm as I’m writing this article. I’m in my room, with my wife and daughter asleep. My son is siting on my lap. The alarm is set for 3am!
One thing worth knowing before you arrive: this is a big operation. The hotel runs to 500 bedrooms, which is why check-in at odd hours never feels chaotic despite the volume of early-flight travellers passing through.
That Wine Tower in the Radisson Blu Stansted atrium isn't just for show. It stands around 13 metres tall and holds several thousand bottles, and the staff retrieve them by hoisting acrobatic "wine angels" up the glass to pluck your bottle from height. Which is a lot more theatre than I expected three minutes from a Ryanair gate.
There are three restaurants in the Radisson Blu Stansted. Something for the early flight and the leisurely one.
The Wine Tower Bar sits right in the middle of the atrium, and it's where we ended up. From 5pm to 11pm it does bar food. We weren't massively hungry, so a few plates of fries and warm hummus did the job. Both were excellent. The design alone is worth a look.
Collage Restaurant is the main dining option at the Radisson Blu Stansted. This is the one to book if you want a proper sit-down meal rather than snacks at the bar.
Then there's Station 169. A more casual spot for a quick bite. Handy if you're just passing through before an early gate call.
All restaurants sit inside the hotel, which makes life easy. You don't need to go hunting for the Radisson Blu Stansted restaurant menu on some third-party site the night before your flight. Collage handles the proper sit-down meals, Station 169 covers the grab-and-go. Whether you've got a whole evening to kill or ten minutes before your gate call, one of the two has you sorted.
I booked a family room for my family of four. We were given a room on the 3rd floor, overlooking the interior of the hotel. There was no window to the outside. The window looked into the centre of the hotel. Where we could see the Wine Tower Bar on the ground floor. The room had the following features
The room was functional, rather than luxury. I’ve seen a million hotel rooms like this. And so have you!
I was a bit disappointed that we didn’t have a window to the outside. The window faced inwards, towards the centre of the hotel. I have Gold Status with Radisson, so I should have got an upgrade.
The beds themselves were comfortable, with a firm mattress.
The hotel has three restaurants. The Wine Tower Bar, Collage Restaurant and Station 169.
I had dinner at Wine Tower Bar. From 5pm to 11pm, they offer bar food. My family wasn’t too hungry, as we had eaten on our way to the airport. So some bar snacks went down well.
We ordered a few portions of fries, and some bread with hummus. Both were excellent. The fries were made from fresh potatoes, rather than taken from the freezer. The hummus was good too. It was served warm, with chick peas and fluffy pitta bread.
The Radisson Blu is the best option, if you need a Stansted Airport hotel. It’s the closest hotel to the airport. It’s also well priced. It has a cool design. And a fitness centre with swimming pool.
The one thing I'd flag before you book the Radisson Blu Stansted is the room lottery. We ended up on the 3rd floor looking inwards onto the Wine Tower Bar, with no window to the outside world. I've got Gold Status with Radisson, so I'd hoped for a nudge to something better. It never came. If a proper outside view matters to you, ask at check-in — don't assume the status will do the work.
So who's it for? Anyone doing the early-flight dash who wants to fall out of bed and be at the gate in three minutes. If that's you, book it. If you're after a scenic weekend away, this isn't the one — but then, nobody stays three minutes from a Ryanair gate for the view.