On the mezzanine level, the world’s cultures, languages and stories converge on the little purple-lighted doorway between Caffe Italia and a couple of Internet terminals. Grundy, in the middle of his two-day travel odyssey, reaches for his Visa card. “I probably would have gone to the bar and spent the same amount of money,” he says, paying about $75 to sleep for six hours in a tiny, high-tech “cabin.”

The 32 rooms are a cross between a space-saving Japanese capsule hotel and the ultra-sleek, first-class cabin on a British Airways jumbo jet. Each has a bed with a fluffy duvet, a fold-out desk, a large-screen TV and a shower— all buffed out with high-gloss plastic walls, like luxury accommodations on some miniature spaceship.

As Grundy closes his room’s heavy door behind him, Usman Waheed walks up to one of the touch-screen check-in computers. A 28-year-old Harvard Business School student, he has a 10-hour layover on his trip from Boston to Islamabad, Pakistan. He is tired from the flight but clearly excited that he is getting married in Pakistan this weekend.

If he hadn’t found a bed, Waheed says, he would have taken the train into London and walked around all day, jet-lagged and heavy-legged.

A steady stream of travelers walks through the hotel’s door, some curious, some desperate.

“I just need to crash for a little bit,” says Greg Horchak, 27, a college student from Texas who has 15 hours to kill between the arrival of his flight from Dallas and his connecting flight to Tel Aviv to see his father for the holidays.

... contd.