Sleeping in Airports blog

With more than 6500 of your votes and 650 airport reviews, I am pleased to announce sleepinginairports.com’s picks for best and worst airports of 2008. This is not a contest on architectural design and latest airport related technology, the winners of our prestigious (lol!) Golden Pillow Award have done so as a result of providing travellers with a pleasureable airport experience, a tolerance towards overnight sleepers, comfortable seating, facilities to keep people entertained and friendly staff/customs and security agents.

There are no big surprises in the Best Airport Category. Singapore Changi remains the most popular airport for the 12th year running. With its hotel like facilities including spas, sleep lounges with specially designed “snooze chairs”, gardens, movie theatres, games rooms, music lounges, live entertainment, swimming pool and Jacuzzi, free WiFi and free city tours, its easy to see why “Club Changi” is tops with air travellers. Runners Up were Seoul Incheon and Hong Kong.

This year we also had regional voting. Here are the regional best airports:

Europe - AMSTERDAM, Netherlands
North America - SAN FRANCISCO, USA
Caribbean, Central & South America - RIO DE JANEIRO GIG, Brazil
Middle East - DUBAI, United Arab Emirates
Africa - JOHANNESBURG, South Africa
Asia - SINGAPORE

View the runners up in each region here.

On the other side of the tarmac, we have the worst airports. These are the airports that you do all you can to avoid. After years of vying for worst airport title, Paris Charles de Gaulle has come out on top as the airport you will do anything to avoid. Reviewers, often using very colourful language in their descriptions, complain of homeless people , filthy washrooms and uncomfortable seating.  It’s not all bad though.  While many experiences at CDG were bad,  the trick seems to be making your way over to the newer terminal - Terminal 2.  Apparently it’s cleaner and there are no homeless people there.

Runners up in the Worst Airport category are:

2. Moscow Sheremetyevo, Russia
3. Paris Beauvais, France
4. Los Angeles, USA
5. New York JFK, USA

THE POLLS ARE NOW OPEN FOR the 2009 BEST AND WORST AIRPORTS

VIEW THE FULL BEST & WORST AIRPORT LIST

For many years sleepinginairports.com has survived and been able to grow by hawking text links to travel related companies vying for your attention. Unfortunately, times are a bit tough in the economy right now (you might have already heard…lol), so we will have no sponsorship next year. Add to this I will be unemployed in a few days.  While this is good in that I will have tonnes of time to work on the site, I won’t have the cash to spend on the web hosting and other services like the polls, cartoons and programming upgrades to keep this site working and useful.

I realize you, as a site visitor, are not likely to be (a) swimming in cash or (b) willing to part with your money, since you are researching for ways to save money on hotels by sleeping in airports, but even a $1 donation could help. Consider….. that’s significantly less than a new “visa” in Kathmandu or a porters fees in Manila, and similar to the cost of toilet paper from a bathroom attendant in Cairo.

So if this site has helped or entertained you in anyway or if you don’t even know what site I’m talking about and just want to give away money, please considering making a donation to keep sleepinginairports.com up and growing.  If you can’t make a financial donation, you also help by continuing to send in your stories, photos and talk about the site in forums and blogs.  I really do appreciate that!  :-))

Thanks and sweet dreams!
Donna

Less than 3 months ago, I started a page on Facebook to unite users of the site.  I am so happy that we already have 283 members!  YAY!  If you haven’t already joined, please join today to begin sharing travel tips, ask questions, check out some photos and meet some cool people.

Hey everyone!

I’m going to be away until late September.  Since I might not have a chance to update this while I am away, here are a few of the most popular photos and videos I’ve posted here (of course there are many more, so check out the categories on the left too):

- Airport erections
- Extreme Security
- Airport Camping
- Showering in the Airport

A few of my fave videos that were ignored:

- Pilot School
- Crash Landing

Don’t forget to send your airport photos to photos [at] sleepinginairports.com.  I’ll be passing through 8 airports on this trip, so I hope to come back with many stories and photos of my own.

And lastly have you voted for the best airport in 2008 yet??

Cheers,
Donna

I finally figured out how to create a fan page on Facebook. The word “fan” may be too strong a word, but if you kinda like the site and would like to keep in touch, please add yourself to the list. Share travel tips, make site suggestions, sing camp fire songs….whatever. :-))

Just when I thought my web updating skillz couldn’t get any worse, I seemed to have buggered the site up quite a bit.  Registering / signing-in / submitting new reviews and ….wow….even clicking the “Read the Airport Reviews” link will apparently get you no where on sleepinginairports.com until the cleanup crew (aka my lifesavers at Elehost) come to my rescue.  Its moments like these that I really hate the internet!!!

Hurricane Donna seems to have “only” affected a few asp files.  The rest of the content is still there.  Besides not being able to register and submit reviews, you just have to type the city name into the SEARCH box to get to the actual airport reviews.

I hope to have this fixed within the next day or so.

UPDATE: EVERYTHING IS BACK TO NORMAL NOW

Today is the Budget Traveller’s Guide to Sleeping in Airports’ 12th birthday.

12!!!!!!!!!!!

I can’t believe we haven’t been kicked off the internet yet. A special thank you to all of the people who have stopped by this kooky little site over the years. Whenever I read comments about sleepinginairports.com on other blogs and referral sites I feel really proud of this crazy web site idea I had 12 years ago. It hasn’t always been an easy task keeping this updated - I’m just one person with a full time job and a life away from this, so time (and motivation)  can be a challenge.  The site has grown from my 3 measly little reviews to over 5300 airport reviews for airports all over the world.

Again, thanks for stopping by, recommending the site and submitting your awesome stories and photos!

The Budget Traveller’s Guide to Sleeping in Airports through the years:

June 1994: After days of fretting that I would be kicked out of the Dublin airport, I discovered that there are “others” just like me.  I got a few hours sleep the night before my flight back to Toronto, despite annoying announcements repeated every 10 minutes reminding me not to smoke.  I don’t even smoke, you clowns, so turn that damn recording off!!
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