Don't Leave the Station: The Hotels Where the Train Stops Almost Beside the Bed

The Tokyo Station Hotel is inside Tokyo Station's Marunouchi building: the station opened in 1914, the hotel in 1915, and today it has 150 rooms and suites.

St. Pancras in London was built in an era when a train journey was an occasion, and its Gothic brick façade looks like a palace with trains parked behind it.

Canfranc in the Pyrenees reversed the idea: the station itself, opened in 1928 on the Spanish-French border, is now the hotel.

THE OSAKA STATION HOTEL connects directly to the West Gate of Osaka Station, with 418 rooms on floors 30 to 38, on the site of the original 1874 Osaka station.

Fairmont The Queen Elizabeth in Montréal was built above Central Station, and when it opened in 1958 engineering solutions were needed to keep the vibration of the trains below out of the rooms.

Station hotels fall into two kinds: the historic generation of the railway age, and the new generation built inside enormous transport hubs.

If there is one hotel to open this article with, this is it.

The Tokyo Station Hotel (opens in a new tab) is right inside the red Marunouchi building of Tokyo Station. Not connected to it. Not across the road. Inside it.

And the story starts almost together with the station itself. Tokyo Station opened in 1914. A year later, in 1915, the hotel opened inside the station building to host travellers arriving in the Japanese capital.

Then came war, bombing and reconstruction. In 1945 the station building was hit in air raids and its roof and parts of the structure were destroyed. The hotel reopened in 1951, closed again in 2006 as part of the station's enormous conservation and restoration project, and reopened in 2012.

Today it has 150 rooms and suites. But there is something here far more interesting than a room count. There are rooms that look into the station itself.

Hotel guests can reach the Archive Balcony, which looks closely onto the restored ornamentation of the north and south domes and lets you watch travellers passing beneath them.

Which means you can end your day in Tokyo, go back to your room — and still be inside the story of the station.

In London the story is even more dramatic. From outside, St. Pancras (opens in a new tab) looks almost illogical for a railway station.

Spires. Red brick. Gothic windows. A frontage that looks as though somebody built a palace — and then happened to park trains behind it.

But it is not a coincidence. The historic hotel built as part of the station complex was made for exactly the era when a train journey was an occasion.

Today the building houses St. Pancras London, Autograph Collection, the historic hotel known for years as the St. Pancras Renaissance.

And this is one of the places where I want the article to stop and ask: why did anyone build hotels inside stations in the first place?

Because before low-cost flights, taxi apps and high-speed rail, the great railway station was the gateway to the city. The wealthy traveller stepped off the train. The luggage came down with them. And the hotel was waiting. Not in another neighbourhood. Above them.

And here the article changes direction. Because Canfranc (opens in a new tab) in the Pyrenees is not just a place where a hotel meets a station. The station itself became the hotel. And that is an entirely different story.

Canfranc International Railway Station was once one of the most impressive railway buildings in Europe. A long, monumental building, opened in 1928 near the border between Spain and France.

But over the years the station lost the great international role it had been built for. The enormous building remained. The trains no longer filled it as planned.

And then, instead of demolishing it, somebody decided to do something far more interesting. To put beds in it.

Today it houses Canfranc Estación, a Royal Hideaway Hotel. And it may be one of the hotels that suits SherryStay best: not because it is the grandest. Because you cannot separate the room you sleep in from the story of the place.

If the Tokyo Station Hotel is the historic story, Osaka shows what this idea looks like in the 21st century.

THE OSAKA STATION HOTEL (opens in a new tab) connects directly to the West Gate of JR Osaka Station. But there is a lovelier detail: the hotel stands where the original Osaka station, opened in 1874, once stood.

In other words, an entirely new hotel was built around the memory of the place where the city's rail traffic began.

And this time you're not sleeping in a low historic building. The rooms are on floors 30–38. 418 rooms above Osaka, with special rooms and suites on floor 38.

And here the advantage of a station hotel takes on a different meaning. From Shin-Osaka, where the Shinkansen arrives, it is about five minutes by train to Osaka Station. From Kansai airport you can take the JR Limited Express Haruka directly to Osaka Station and carry on from there to the hotel connected to it.

This is the kind of hotel where you can arrive in a city — and never touch a taxi at all.

Kyoto is a city people come to for temples that are centuries old. But one of the most striking buildings you'll see the moment you arrive is actually the station.

Kyoto Station is an enormous complex of trains, restaurants, shops and passageways. And inside it is Hotel Granvia Kyoto (opens in a new tab).

And this is one of those places where location completely changes how you can travel. You landed. You came in by train. You stepped off the Shinkansen. And the hotel is already there.

The next morning you can go back down into the station and head out to Nara, Osaka, Tokyo, or carry on within Kyoto.

And it makes me think that for years we may have been asking the wrong question when choosing a hotel. Not: how close is the hotel to public transport? But: how many steps are there between the bed and the train?

In Montréal they took the idea even further. Fairmont The Queen Elizabeth (opens in a new tab) was built directly above Central Station.

When the 21-storey hotel opened in 1958, engineering solutions were needed to stop the vibration of the trains passing below from reaching guests in their rooms.

Think about that. You're asleep. Beneath you is one of the city's main railway stations. And the hotel was designed so that you wouldn't feel it.

Today the hotel still has direct access to Central Station and to Montréal's underground passageway network.

But this hotel has one more story. In 1969 John Lennon and Yoko Ono held their famous Bed-In for peace here.

Which means this is a hotel that sits above a railway station — and still managed to become part of the city's history in its own right.

There is the first generation. Hotels built in an era when the railway station was one of the most important places in the city. Tokyo Station. St. Pancras. Canfranc. These are hotels that tell the history of the railway.

And then there is the new generation. Osaka. Kyoto. Hotels built or operating as part of enormous transport hubs where you can move between high-speed rail, metro, shopping, restaurants and a hotel almost without going outside.

These are no longer just railway hotels. They are something else. They are hotels for a world in which time has become the luxury.

We're used to thinking about location in terms of distance from attractions. 500 metres from the centre. Ten minutes from the museum. Two metro stops from the main street.

But after looking at these hotels, you can measure location in an entirely different way. How long passes between the moment the train stops and the moment the suitcase is in the room?

In Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto, the answer can be minutes.

And if you're arriving late at night, travelling with children, hauling suitcases or leaving on an early train in the morning — suddenly a room in the station can be worth more than a grander room on the other side of the city.

Before you book a hotel in a railway station just because Sherry said it was a wonderful idea, we need to talk about the other side as well.

Central stations are busy places. Very busy. Tokyo Station can feel like a city in its own right.

Large stations sometimes have dozens of exits, levels and passageways. And "a room in the station" doesn't always mean you step off the train and see the lobby straight away. Sometimes it's inside the station that you'll have a fair distance to walk.

There are also rooms facing busier areas, so it's worth checking sound insulation and which way the room faces.

But as far as I'm concerned there is a simple rule: the more your trip is built on trains, the more a station hotel turns from a gimmick into a smart decision.

If I were building a first Japan itinerary today based on trains: Tokyo → Kyoto → Osaka. I would seriously consider running an experiment.

Three destinations. Three station hotels. The Tokyo Station Hotel. Hotel Granvia Kyoto. THE OSAKA STATION HOTEL.

No taxis between the hotel and the station. No hunting for the platform with suitcases after a journey across the city.

You get off the train. You sleep. You get up. And you go back to the train. And suddenly the logistical part of a multi-city trip almost disappears.

This is the most interesting thing in the whole story. We think of hotels in stations as a modern idea of convenience. But it really isn't new.

More than a century ago people already understood something very simple: whoever gets off a train needs somewhere to sleep. So they built them one.

Then came the age of the car. Airports. Motorways. Hotels moved to city centres, to beaches and to resorts.

And now, with high-speed trains connecting whole cities again in a few hours, the old idea is starting to feel completely new. Perhaps the future of the city hotel isn't only beside the attractions. Perhaps it is exactly where you arrive.