Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport plans to open Minute Suites sleep units and showers on international Concourses E and F.
Minute Suites already has sleep units on Concourses T and B.
But the plans for international concourse sleep units has been in the works for more than seven years, since before the international terminal opened in 2012.
There have been multiple attempts over the years to strike a contract for the international concourse sleep units since then. A 2014 version of the project was canceled. In 2017, all of the companies competing for the contract were disqualified. Last year, Hartsfield-Jackson again restarted the contracting process.
In this round of contracting, two companies competed: Minute Suites and Unique Grace.
In August 2018, Minute Suites was recommended to win the contract to open sleep units at the Concourse E center point and on Concourse F near gate F6, proposing to pay the airport a minimum of $90,000 in rent for the locations.
But it wasn’t until now that the contract moved forward. According to an airport spokeswoman, the delay may have been due to changes with procurement procedures.
The Atlanta City Council transportation committee voted Wednesday in favor of the contract.
If approved by the full city council, the new Minute Suites will open next year, according to Minute Suites co-founder Daniel Solomon.
The Concourse E location will be the largest Minute Suites location to date, according to Solomon. It will have 15 units, while the Concourse F location will have eight units, said Hartsfield-Jackson general manager John Selden.
Minute Suites charges $42 an hour, or $155 overnight. Showers cost $30, or $20 with a suite rental.
The roughly 70 square-foot rooms are “a nice service for the business people who do business in Atlanta to get refreshed and get ready for their meetings without having to take a shuttle to the hotels,” Selden said.
“It really is a leading edge idea to have these mini hotel rooms in the airport to service the customers that have long layovers and [those who] would just like to refresh themselves for a few hours before they go to a business meeting,” he said.
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