On this page (5 sections)
Neither hotel is taking bookings
Millennium Hotels carries the same notice on both Gatwick properties. Copthorne Hotel London Gatwick "is not accepting any reservations requests for accommodation", and Copthorne Hotel Effingham Gatwick "is not accepting any reservation requests for accomodation", with the group pointing enquiries at the rest of its UK hotels.
Nothing on either page gives a reason or a date. The signal that this is meant to be temporary rather than permanent is on Effingham's restaurant pages, which describe each venue as closed until the hotel reopens. Treat a reopening as expected but unscheduled, and check the operator's own page before making plans around either hotel.
Third-party sites have not followed. Park-and-fly agents still sell Copthorne packages, and hotel aggregators still list rooms, rates and a shuttle timetable. If you have a booking made through an agent, confirm it directly with the hotel rather than assuming the listing is current, and if you are shopping now, treat the alternatives below as the real field.
Two hotels, one village
Copthorne is a village east of the airport, and Millennium runs two four-star hotels in it whose names differ by one word. Booking sites shorten both to "Copthorne Gatwick", which is how people used to arrive at the wrong one with a case in the boot.
| Hotel | Address | To the airport | The character |
|---|---|---|---|
| Copthorne Hotel London Gatwick | Copthorne Way, RH10 3PG | 5 minute drive | 227 rooms, woodland, pool and squash |
| Copthorne Hotel Effingham Gatwick | West Park Road, RH10 3EU | 10 minute drive, about 40 min by public transport | 1841 parkland estate, golf and tennis |
Millennium Hotels property pages, July 2026. Both hotels are currently closed to accommodation bookings; figures describe them as the operator states them.
The two sit about a mile and a half apart in a straight line, both south-east of the airfield. Neither is walkable to a terminal and neither pretended to be.
The shuttle that only ran one way
This is the part worth reading even if you never book a Copthorne, because it is the single most misreported fact about these hotels. The Copthorne Way hotel advertised hourly shuttles from the hotel to the airport, 04:15 to 22:15, at £4.50 per person. The terms and conditions on the very same Park and Fly page then state: "There is no shuttle from the airport to the hotel; guests are responsible for their own transport arrangements to the property."
So the service was one-directional. You could ride to the terminal for £4.50; getting from the terminal to the hotel the evening before was a taxi you paid for yourself. Effingham lists its own service as a "one way airport shuttle from hotel", so both hotels worked the same way, and any listing describing either as a return shuttle at £4.50 each way is wrong in a way that costs money.
Two further corrections to the listings while we are here. Several booking sites and parking agents advertise the Copthorne shuttle as every 30 minutes until 23:15 at £5 per person; Millennium's own page says hourly, to 22:15, at £4.50. And Effingham publishes no shuttle timetable at all, so the 04:15 and 22:15 times belong to the Copthorne Way hotel only and should not be quoted for the estate.
What the two hotels are, for when they return
Copthorne Hotel London Gatwick stands on Copthorne Way at RH10 3PG, a five-minute drive from the airport by Millennium's reckoning. It was a 16th-century farmhouse before it was a hotel and runs to 227 rooms looking over 100 acres of woodland, with a gym, a swimming pool and squash courts. Check-in 14:00, checkout 12:00, parking on site and chargeable. Its Park and Fly packages came in 8-night and 15-night versions bundling a room with parking for the trip, with wifi included when booked direct, and a cancellation deadline of 14:00 local time at least one day before arrival to avoid a one-night charge. Club Plus rooms included breakfast and overnight parking; the Executive Suite included the parking but not the breakfast.
Copthorne Hotel Effingham Gatwick is on West Park Road at RH10 3EU, built around a country house on a parkland estate dating to 1841, and Millennium puts it a ten-minute drive from the airport or about 40 minutes by public transport. Guests get a nine-hole golf course, floodlit tennis courts and a gym on the estate, which is the clearest way to tell the two apart: if the listing mentions golf, it is this one. It advertises express check-in and check-out alongside the usual 14:00 and 12:00. Note that Millennium's own figures for its Club Rooms disagree on the same page, with the room card giving 28.05 square metres and the description 35, so treat the size as approximate. Unlike its sibling, Effingham published no Park and Fly package at all.
What to book instead
For the same job, a four-star bed a few miles out with parking attached, the Sandman Signature at Three Bridges is the nearest live equivalent, selling 4, 8 and 15 day parking with the pool and gym included, though its transfers are taxis from £18 per car rather than a bus. The Crowne Plaza on the edge of Crawley is the closest match on grade and price and runs a morning shuttle, and the Radisson RED at Lowfield Heath is nearer the airfield with a bus that starts before 04:00, which is the one thing no Copthorne offered.
If what drew you was the setting rather than the airport, Holiday Inn Worth sits in parkland near M23 Junction 10 and runs a large park-and-fly compound. And if the bed is not really the point, the hotels with parking page prices every bookable package side by side, while long stay parking covers leaving the car without a room at all. The full field is on the Gatwick hotel map.