City Lodge OR Tambo Airport Hotel

This is a continuation of our Munich & South Africa trip. You can find the full trip itinerary here.

The hotel was actually built on top of the airport's parking garage. We were assigned a room on the 11th floor, which was actually on "ground" floor - which was the level that we came in after taking the elevator. I booked the room from bid2stay which is an online bidding tool for booking City Lodge hotels in South Africa. They have specials for certain days, and if you book around 1-2 months before your travel date, they have some pretty good deals. I originally booked online via the regular website for a rate of R1200 and I was able to book via bid2stay for R660, almost half price!

We went straight to our room. The size was a bit small but it was adequate for one night. Almost everything looked pretty new. This hotel was built for the 2010 World Cup, and everything was still in pretty good condition. 

The bedroom opened up to the bathroom area, which could also be separated by releasing the blind. It actually did make the room feel a little bigger when open.

There was an elevated shower as well as a bath tub.

The rate that we booked actually didn't include breakfast. So the next morning for breakfast, we walked back to the airport to grab a quick snack before we started our tour of Johannesburg. 

Hotel breakfast area

While we waited for our tour guide to pick us up, we walked around the hotel to check out the facilities. There's a nice swimming pool area which was pretty empty.



There's also a gym which was also empty. :)



Thoughts:

We think this hotel was decent for the price and was definitely very convenient if you have a 1 night layover in Johannesburg. The convenience of not having to take taxi and just walk straight to the hotel from the airport terminal was nice. If you have more than 2 nights in Johannesburg I would recommend staying somewhere else such as Sandton or Rosebank area. Another hotel option that was also connected to the airport is the Intercontinental, which looked really nice but also carries a hefty price tag. :)

Next Post: Exploring Johannesburg