On this page (5 sections)
Buckingham Gate: the walkable one
The hotel stands at Buckingham Gate, RH6 0NT, just off the airport's southern edge: 0.2 miles and a two-minute drive from the station-side terminal by Marriott's reckoning, five minutes' drive from North. The number that matters more is on foot. A signed pedestrian path runs from outside the hotel into the South Terminal, 15 minutes by the airport's published figure and nearer ten by the hotel's, flat and step-free but outdoors the whole way.
That footpath makes the Courtyard unique in the Gatwick ring: every other off-airport hotel depends on wheels, while this one treats walking as the default and prices accordingly, above the shuttle strip and below the walkway hotels. Read the walk honestly before booking it: with two children, two cases and rain, 15 outdoor minutes is a different experience from the Hilton's covered ten, and that difference is exactly what the rate gap is paying you for.
The shuttle question, answered
Courtyard Gatwick shuttle is one of the most-searched questions about this hotel, and the answer is plain: it does not run one. Marriott's own page lists no complimentary shuttle, and the transfers it points to are the shared Gatwick Hoppa bus, quoted at £5.25 per person, and the two-minute taxi hop. Older agent listings still describe a cheap hotel bus on a 20-minute loop; treat those as history and plan on feet, Hoppa or taxi.
The practical playbook: walk by default, and reserve the Hoppa money for the legs where it earns it, a rainy dawn with full luggage, or a North Terminal flight, where the alternatives are the five-minute drive or walking into South and riding the free shuttle across, about 25 minutes door to desk in total. A family of four paying the bus both ways spends £42, which is most of the way to a taxi and a strong argument for packing wheels that roll.
Rooms and the Bar and Kitchen
The 218 rooms are recent-generation Courtyard: sensible doubles and twins aimed at people with laptops, family configurations that Marriott rates for up to eight in the largest cases, and a proper accessibility fit-out, with roll-in showers, grab rails, and accessible routes to parking, the restaurant and the free gym. Check-in opens at 15:00, checkout is noon, and pets stay home.
Food and drink run through one venue, The Bar and Kitchen, serving breakfast, lunch and a seasonal dinner menu with cocktails, and the hotel lists food available around the clock, which matters more here than at most addresses given the hours its guests keep. It is one kitchen, not the Sofitel's four; the compensation is the footpath, because the South Terminal's landside restaurants and cafes are 15 minutes away when the hotel menu palls, and open from the first departures.
Parking and the long stay next door
On-site parking costs £25 per day, with blue-badge bays by the entrance, and the hotel sells park-and-fly packages bundling a night with 8 or 15 days of parking, competing directly with the bundles in park stay fly packages. The geography adds a wrinkle no other hotel here has: the airport's own long stay compound begins a few hundred yards away, so a night at the Courtyard plus a separately booked week in pre-booked long stay is an easy combination to assemble without a transfer bus in sight.
Price all three shapes for your dates, room plus £25 a day, the hotel's own package, and room plus official long stay, because the winner moves with the season. The £25 day rate is an overnight tool; across a fortnight it is £350, and nobody should pay it.
Who it suits, honestly
Book the Courtyard when the walk suits you: South Terminal departures at civilised hours, light packers who prefer pocketing the usual gap to the Hilton for the price of 15 outdoor minutes, drivers assembling a cheap night-plus-long-stay combination, and anyone who wants a calmer, newer-feeling mid-range hotel than the terminal giants. Business travellers working the airport perimeter get the gym, the all-day kitchen and desks built for the job.
Skip it for the flights that punish moving parts: pre-dawn North Terminal departures belong at Hampton by Hilton or its neighbours two minutes from that terminal's doors, and wet-morning South departures with a full luggage trolley are what the Hilton's covered walkway exists for. The whole field, walkway to budget strip, is at the full Gatwick hotel map.