Sheraton LAX Ups Its Game in the Most Important Way an Airport Hotel Can (View from the Wing)

Over the summer I wrote about the Sheraton LAX, a property I’ve written about before and stayed at many many times.

Before my summer stay, I described the way to choose an airport hotel as:

Book the one attached to the terminal, if one exists and price allows.
If no property attached to the terminal, then whichever has been most recently renovated.

After that Sheraton LAX stay I realized the number one thing is that an airport hotel needs to be able to reliably get you to the airport. (An attached hotel generally fits the bill most easily, but renovations don’t replace facilitated access.)

The whole point of an airport hotel is that it’s easy to and from the airport. Once airport transportation becomes unreliable, you have to wait longer to get there and you have to turn up earlier in the hotel to return to the airport ‘just in case’. And once you add time to travel, you might as well stay at a nicer hotel downtown.

The Sheraton has long been the clear choice at LAX – with a Starbucks in the lobby, mediocre club lounge, and decent hotel restaurant.

But competition has heated up, with the new Hyatt Place (that has had its own shuttle issues) and now that the former Radisson LAX has become a Hyatt and is getting some much-needed investment. It’s the closest hotel to the airport.

While options aren’t great overall, they’re getting better and the Sheraton can’t rest on its laurels.

And good thing, it doesn’t appear to be.

The Sheraton LAX reached out to me aggressively after my July post on their poor airport shuttle (there was no room on the first one that came by, and only 4 or 5 seats available on the second shared shuttle leaving many guests that had waited for the first shuttle waiting for a third one).

I decided to give them another shot last month and they had addressed the shuttle situation, and seemingly quite well. They do not share it with another hotel any longer, sharing it with a parking lot instead.

As a Starwood Platinum I received what they consider a suite (to me, a suite has walls between rooms).

The suite bathrooms are the same as in standard rooms.

The club here really is quite bare bones.

Alcohol is for purchase.

But the shuttle works

And that was all I cared about.

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