Last Updated on September 17, 2023
If you like unique hotels, Jumbo Stay at Arlanda airport in Sweden should be on your list! The hotel is in a converted Boeing 747 that was a working passenger jet first manufactured in 1976. It’s been used by Singapore Airlines, Pan Am and several others…but now is permanently grounded just outside of Stockholm!
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Jumbo Stay Airplane Hotel Sweden
Check-in/Reception
The entrance of the plane is obviously higher up, where a normal plane door would be. They do have a lift, or you can just walk up the stairs (the pros of travelling with just a hand luggage backpack!).
Since the pandemic, they have moved to contactless check-in. If you’ve paid for the room in advance, they’ll send you a code for the door and then leave the key card on the front desk with your name on it.
Once you have a key card, you can use that to access the front door, rather than use the code. I never actually saw any staff during my stay. It does say you can reach them via a phone number though. When I left, I then just left my key in a basket at the front desk.
The Rooms at Jumbo Stay
Jumbo Stay is actually considered a hostel, there are a few dorm rooms as well as shared bathrooms. There are several different types of room options available:
- Dorms
- Engine Rooms
- Wheel House room (with toilet)
- The Cockpit (with bathroom)
- Blackbox Suite (with bathroom)
- Regular rooms with or without bathrooms.
Triple Room shared bathroom
I stayed in a regular room with a shared bathroom. In reality it was quite a big room considering it’s on an airplane, but they are very basic. I had a double bed (that was actually VERY comfortable), it then had a single bunk bed above it, an overhead locker bin for storage, a TV, a mirror and coat hooks.
There were also 3 power outlets, including one right next to the bed with a small shelf.
The toilets weren’t actually too bad. There were two bigger bathrooms at the front and then several smaller cubicles at the rear. Each cubicle had a shower (with shower gel, towels are also provided), a toilet and a sink.
Despite being shared, I never had to wait to use one and they were always very clean.
Other Rooms
I didn’t see inside the other rooms, but the cockpit room does indeed have a full control panel (as well as an en-suite and it looked like they had some outside furniture up there too). The engine rooms and wheel house rooms are located outside.
The engine rooms don’t have bathrooms, so if you do need to go to the toilet during the night, you will need to go outside to get to the ones in the main plane.
Staying at Jumbo Stay Airplane Hotel
Something I found a little strange was that you had to take your shoes off at the door. As a frequent flier where there are endless debates about whether you should take your shoes off on a plane or not, as well as the unwritten rule of NEVER using the toilets without shoes…people aren’t great at aiming…it felt wrong! Especially as I was using a shared toilet!
They do have shoe covers at the door so I used these to go to the bathroom…still not taking any chances, I guess it’s just been drummed into me!
It was actually very quiet too. Sometimes hotels can be a constant stream of suitcase wheels in the corridor and slamming doors, and even with the shared bathrooms, if you were awake you could hear the odd door but nothing that woke me up (and I’m a really light sleeper).
*Note – Someone recently commented on one of my social media posts saying that they stayed near the back of the plane and they did hear a lot of noise. I did not find this in the middle to front section.
There also wasn’t any noise from the airport either. The runway is the other side of the terminal building, you could see the odd plane take off but they were in the distance. The closest an actual real working plane got was when it parked at a remote stand for the night.
So if you’re expecting to plane spot from Jumbo Stay, you may be a little disappointed.
For a room that’s quite basic and with a shared bathroom, I do think the price was fairly high. My solo occupancy triple room was just over £70 a night. But there is a novelty factor that does make it a fun experience!
Plane Exterior
There are a couple of really cool features at Jumbo Stay, including an outside seating area ON THE WING! I thought that was fun. It’s not every day that you can walk on the wing of an airplane!
Underneath the plane they also have a tyre swing made out of an actual tyre that’s used for the landing gear. Like a car tyre it has a load of stats on it, the maximum speed rating of that particular tyre was 225mph.
The outside of the plane does look a little rough, you can see where old logos have been pulled off and they haven’t been replaced. Just the tail fin has the Jumbo Stay branding, along with a couple of symbols on the nose cone. But then I can’t imagine how much it costs to actually fully brand up a plane!
Breakfast
Breakfast is included within the room rate. Being classed as an airport hotel, it is available from 3am-10am, which is quite a good duration.
The offering are fairly basic though, it has: bread and butter, cereals, yoghurt, meat, cheese, orange juice and a coffee machine with tea, coffee and hot chocolate (however the coffee machine was switched off on my second morning when I had breakfast at 4am).
The breakfast room is located in the front part of the plane (under the cockpit). It’s a nice little area with tables and chairs, two airplane seats and then a bunch of information and photos showing the plane in service. It was so strange seeing pictures of it in the sky!
How To Get To Jumbo Stay
As mentioned, Jumbo Stay is located at Arlanda Airport. The shuttle buses between the airport and the car parks/rental companies both stop at Jumbo Stay. It takes a couple of minutes and they run every 10-15 minutes from outside of terminal 2 and 4.
To get into Stockholm city centre, I then caught the VY flybussarna from terminal 4. It works out cheaper than the train (during my stay I paid around £15 for a return trip ticket) but does take a little longer with a journey time of approximately 45 minutes.
The coaches have free Wi-Fi and USB charging ports. It’s slightly cheaper if you buy online and then use the QR code (it can be saved to Apple Wallet), which is valid for one journey in each direction at any time within 3 months of purchasing.
As I was in Stockholm for the weekend, it worked out quite nicely as my flight arrived late at night and then departed early in the morning. So one full day in the city was fine for me (I went to Stockholm mostly to visit Grona Lund theme park) and staying at Jumbo Stay was then convenient for my flights.
Alternatively, they do have their own car park if you happen to have a car.
Book Jumbo Stay
Jumbo Stay is definitely one of the most unique hotels I’ve every stayed at and for the novelty factor I would rank it as one of my favourites.
I booked my stay at Jumbo Stay through Booking.com. I use them for almost all of my trips. You can check rates and availability by clicking the button below.
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This is epic. I saw a similar airplane-to-hotel concept when transiting through Accra airport a few years back. Thanks for sharing!
Cool! There’s a smaller plane and a section of a plane on a glamping site in the UK, but I’ve never seen a full plane like this one before!
Hi!
I think this would be cool if I was a younger traveler. I guess I’m over sharing bathrooms these days lol. It seems a cool thing to do once in your life, though!
I especially liked the idea of sitting out on the wing!
Hello! You can get rooms that have a bathroom in them too!