Lounge Review: The Minute Suites at Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport (ATL)

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Minute Suites is a small chain of private rooms located inside airport terminals, specially designed for you to nap, relax and work, as the company's slogan says. Currently, there are three locations — Atlanta (ATL), Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW) and Philadelphia (PHL) — and just recently, Priority Pass added all of them to its lounge network, allowing members to have one hour of free access followed by a discounted $28 per hour rate for any additional time after that. Before flying out of ATL on an epic five-leg journey down to Cape Town (CPT), I decided to check out the Minute Suites at ATL. Here's what they're like.

Location

You'll find the Minute Suites near gate B16 in the middle of a string of Delta gates in the heart of busy ATL. My wife, TPG Contributor Katie Genter, and I were departing out of the T gates two terminals over, but were able to take the tram over to Terminal B to access this location — it took us less than 12 minutes from the time we exited the Minute Suites to the point when we reached our gate, T17.

Check-In

The Minute Suites check-in process wasn't the quickest — while there were several open rooms and an agent at the front desk available to check us in, it still took us about seven minutes before we could enter the room. To be fair, though, we technically checked in twice since Katie and I were each able to use a Priority Pass membership for a free hour, combining these into two free hours in one room.

At check-in, we were required to provide our Priority Pass cards, identification and a credit card for any incidentals so I handed over my Chase Sapphire Reserve Card. Unfortunately, I didn't think to use any of the in-room incidentals, so we're not sure if these purchases would have coded as travel, which would have allowed us to earn 3x points per dollar. Note that none our cards were retained by the check-in agent, so we were free to leave the room whenever we wanted.

Update 7/6: Per TPG reader Daniel Ward, the purchases don't count as travel:

The Room

There are five rooms available at this location and two or three of them seemed to be empty upon our arrival. We were shown the way to the furthest room: Magnolia.

The Magnolia room was a decent size considering it's a private room in an airport, and we measured it to be 82 inches wide by 100 inches deep. The ceiling was too tall to measure but should be tall enough for even TPG himself at 6'7" to not have any issues. Each room also comes with its own lighting and temperature controls. We found the room to be refreshingly cool when we entered, so we didn't need to adjust anything while we were there.

Inside the room, there's a sofa bed with a second pull-out ground-level sleeping pad. The bed measures about 67 inches long. At 5'11", I was able to lie flat with a pillow behind my head with my feet hanging slightly off the end of the couch, but note that if you're taller, you're going to have to bend your knees when lying down to fit comfortably.

Amenities

The room is stocked with a large two-foot wide, moderately-thick pillow with a disposable pillowcase and I ended up using it for lumbar support when working on the couch. There's a second leather-covered pillow that's about the same size, as well as a blanket measuring seven feet long by five feet wide.

A TV and computer system is available at the small desk in the room, with a flat screen built into the wall. A wireless keyboard is also available for use when the system is in computer mode. I found this system to be slow to respond and not intuitive to use, so I actually gave up after a few minutes of trying to figure out how to switch it over to computer mode. I figure most travelers will probably just use their own computers instead. Additionally, there were five grounded US power plugs, two USB outlets, a box of tissues, two coat hangers and a Sony clock radio available for use during your visit.

Besides what's listed above, nothing else is included with the room, but there were a variety of amenity and toiletry kits available for purchase at the front desk. In the room, were two 20 oz Dasani water bottles ($2.25 each) and three 2.5 oz "Sky Water" bottles (one for $4.99, two for $9, three for $12) you could also buy separately.

Check-Out

At check-in, Katie and I had booked two back-to-back one-hour stays. While we were only planning to use the room for under an hour, we wanted to see if Minute Suites would allow us to combine the two stays in this way — thanks to our Citi Prestige Card and Chase Sapphire Reserve Card accounts, we were able to book these stays at no cost. When we left the room early, the agent expressed concerned that we'd paid for a Priority Pass stay we weren't using, and when we told her there was no reason to worry about it, she insisted on cancelling our second stay from the system anyway.

Overall Impression

Minute Suites is a decent place to crash for an hour or two, especially if you want a private place to sleep, get some work done or if you need the five power plugs to charge lots of electronics. And you can't beat the price: free with a Priority Pass membership. That said, for most layovers, I'd rather spend my time at a regular airport lounge where I can grab some food and beverages before my flight.

Have you checked out the Minute Suites at ATL? Tell us about your experience, below.