As part of our South African Safari trip, we first spent a week in the amazing Kruger National Park, and then we spent a week touring the Garden Route, culminating in a few days in Cape Town. And with that, our trip came to an end, and it was time to fly back home, to New York.

We flew from Cape Town CPT to Addis Ababa ADD, where we’d have an overnight layover, and then the next morning we’d fly from Addis Ababa ADD to New York JFK with a stopover at Abidjan ABJ. I previously reviewed the flight in Ethiopian Airlines Cloud9 Business Class from Cape Town to Addis Ababa. We stayed here overnight on an extended layover before flying from Addis Ababa to new York the next morning. In this post I’ll be reviewing the transit experience and our stay at Ethiopian Airlines Skylight Hotel for Cloud9 Business Class passengers.

I realize that there are questions on Ethiopian’s transit program, so besides a review, this will also serve as a guide with some basic info.

Briefly, the Cloud9 Business Class portion of the Ethiopian Airlines Skylight Hotel is quite magnificent! It’s unfortunate that we were here just long enough for a short but great night’s sleep, without having breakfast or seeing any of the hotel’s other facilities.

What is the Ethiopian Airlines Skylight Hotel?

The Ethiopian Airlines Skylight Hotel is Ethiopian’s transit hotel. There’s actually multiple: Outside the airport grounds (but close to it), there is the main and original Skylight hotel, and there’s also an in-terminal Skylight hotel. The former is a massive complex, with actually two large hotels. One is exclusively for business class passengers, while the other will accommodate any passenger.

These are truly massive hotels. The main Skylight hotel currently has 1024 rooms. Opened originally in 2019 with about 250 rooms, it underwent a renovation and expansion in 2023 and added another 650 rooms or so, to become the largest hotel complex in Africa. Besides the guest rooms, the hotel has an enormous conference center, multiple restaurants, a wellness center for spa treatments, a swimming pool, and much more. It’s somewhat intended as a luxury travel destination in and of itself for the international traveler.

As I mentioned, besides the main Skylight hotel, there is also an in-terminal hotel. While it’s a much smaller hotel with only 97 hotels, it is purpose-built as a transit hotel and it has the massive benefit of being air side, meaning you don’t need to go through immigration or security to get to the hotel (and back after your stay). Unfortunately, passengers on an award ticket or those upgrading (cash or points) are not eligible to stay at the in-terminal Skylight hotel, and (if eligible) will be automatically booked into the main (off-airport) Skylight hotel.

Access Requirements

Anybody can stay at the main Ethiopian Skylight hotel. You don’t even need to be in transit, since you can book to stay at the hotel through the hotel website. However, complimentary access is to Ethiopian Airlines Cloud9 business class passengers that booked a connecting itinerary on Ethiopian Airlines. How you booked the connecting itinerary doesn’t matter, but you must arrive and depart on Ethiopian Airlines, and the layover must be between 8 and 24 hours in duration.

I received access to the Ethiopian Airlines Skylight Hotel as part of my flight itinerary from Cape Town to New York via Addis Ababa, which I booked as one itinerary through United MileagePlus:

1. Ethiopian Airlines flight ET846 on May 29, departing 3:25PM from Cape Town CPT and scheduled to arrive in Addis Ababa ADD at 10:50PM (reviewed here).
2. Ethiopian Airlines flight ET512 on May 30, departing 9:00AM from Addis Ababa ADD and scheduled to arrive in New York JFK at 8:00PM, with a stopover in Abidjan ABJ.

I booked this itinerary for 88.000 points and $52.71 per person, for a total of 176.000 points and $105.42 for my husband and myself. I had 23.000 points already in my United MileagePlus account. I then transferred 153.000 points Chase Ultimate Rewards points to get exactly 176.000 points, and immediately booked the tickets.

Although United mileagePlus miles are definitely not some great source of value, they do provide a cost-effective way for flights to Africa. If you have a United MileagePlus credit card you’ll get 10% off the mileage cost, so you’ll only pay 80.000 miles per person, plus the taxes. And, if you also have United Premier Elite Status, you’ll get a further 5% discount, bringing the cost down to potentially to 74.800 miles and ~$50 in taxes, which is great value, given the distance and flight time covered.

Logistics of Staying at the Ethiopian Airlines Skylight Hotel

While I’ll touch upon these points in the following sections, I wanted to give a brief overview of the most important points, since there are a few things to be aware of.

First of all, if you are eligible for complimentary access, you have to get vouchers before going to the Skylight hotel. Your voucher is important for a number of reasons. First, and obviously, this is you ticket into the hotel. It will be checked at various points. Second, the voucher is also your transit visa into Ethiopia. At immigration, you will present it and the entry and exit stamps will be placed on your ticket. Of course, if you stay at the in-terminal Skylight hotel, this is not so important.

The voucher also tells you what hotel you are booked into. It will say either ‘Skylight Hotel’ or ‘In-terminal Skylight Hotel’ at the top of the voucher, where the hotel name will be printed.

You can get the voucher either upon checkin at your origin, but can also get it in the arrivals corridor of Addis Ababa Bole Intl Airport. After you deplane and turn right towards immigration and transit, you will pass customer service counters. Here they can generate vouchers for you, but also help book you into the Skylight hotel if you’re not already booked into them. Note that there is a Cloud9 Business Class line, identifiable by the red carpet (which is where we were standing). Note that I’d prefer to get it at origin, so you can go straight to the hotel upon arrival in Addis Ababa.

Transportation to and from the hotel is organized by Ethiopian Airlines and all you need to do is follow the signs to the Skylight hotel. Outside a bus will take you to the hotel, and a bus will also bring you back to the airport. These usually leave every 15-30 minutes, depending on the time of day or night.

Once you reach the hotel, the voucher will be taken, and you will be presented with meal tickets. Depending on the duration of your stay and your flight arrival and departure times, you will likely get either breakfast, lunch or dinner, or a combination of these meals, whatever fits your flight times.

With all practicalities out of the way, let’s get into the actual experience of the transit and the hotel itself.

Getting to the Skylight Hotel

We deplaned our Ethiopian Airlines flight from Cape Town at around 11pm. We exited the jetway into a long corridor that stretched the length of the terminal, to merge with a flow of passengers that all were heading towards immigration and transit.

We soon came upon the customer service counters that I showed above, where we stopped to confirm if we were booked into the main or in-terminal Skylight Hotel. It was a momentary wait for the agent to help those in front of us, and they quickly clarified we were booked in the main one.

Truthfully we were a little bummed by that given that we didn’t want to go through the hassle of immigration and such, so we asked if we could switch to the in-terminal hotel. The agent was very happy to oblige, but after a few minutes told us that, since we had not paid the full fare with cash, we were not eligible to stay at the in-terminal hotel. He did clarify that our voucher would double as our transit visa invitation, and we could head over to immigration.

Note if you’re to stay in the in-terminal Skylight Hotel, you’d go through transit security and back to Terminal 2’s airside, where you’d be able to follow the signs to the Skylight Hotel.

For us, immigration was a short walk from the service counter, and soon we were through. Interestingly, the officer stamped our boarding pass, rather than our passport. After this, I was very pleasantly surprised by the excellent signage and the plentiful Ethiopian Airlines staff waiting to direct us in the right direction.

The first step is to take the escalators down from immigration, head straight through the customs checkpoint, and just beyond in the arrivals hall was staff who checked out vouchers and told us to head for a shuttle outside.

Once inside with a number of other passengers, we were driven over to the hotel. This drive only took about 5 minutes, as the hotel is just outside the airport grounds. Once we arrived, the first stop was for economy passengers, and I think it may have amounted to the original Skylight Hotel. We were told to stay seated, and we were driven to the opposite building, and were told this was for business class passengers.

A staff member was waiting by the entrance, and immediately came over to help my husband (and only my husband) with his luggage, through another security checkpoint, and then inside into the hotel lobby. He then seemed surprised when it turned out that I was the one holding all the vouchers… I apologize for not having any pictures but everything went so fast and it was dark that the pictures I do have look pretty awful.

Once inside, the plentiful desk agents checked us in quickly, thoguh we were initially put on different floors since they didn’t have adjacent available rooms (clearly they assumed we were simply two men traveling together). We clarified a single room with two beds was also fine, so we were assigned that. The same staff member that had helped my husband now took both of our carryons over to the elevators, from where we were brought to our room.

Overall, the process of getting from the plane to the hotel was exceedingly efficient, and much smoother than I had expected. I don’t know how smooth it would be earlier in the day when there’s bound to be more passengers around, but it took about 40 minutes to get from the plane to our room.

Design, Rooms and Amenities

The hotel is quite beautiful. All white marble with luxurious and grand touches, wooden elements and gold decorations, it’s quite something. The entrance and lobby area is a massive room with a high ceiling and a staircase leading up to a mezzanine floor, whereas deeper in is a large seating area with plants and various couches and chairs. We didn’t spend much time here as we were closing in on midnight and really just wanted to go to bed.

We followed the valet who took our carryons to the elevators, which were located in a hallway on the other side of the lobby. We were assigned room C521, on the fifth floor. The design of the elevators and corridors continues the style of the lobby, with nice finishes at the room doors.

The valet had our keys and such and opened the door for us, took our carryons in and briefly explained the room’s amenities and features. We gave him a tip and he departed.

At the entrance is a beautiful, wooden wardrobe and storage area, with plenty of space for two carryons or a large suitcase. There’s also two bathrobes, slippers and a variety of other amenities here, including a bag for an in-hotel loundray and dry cleaning service.

The room itself is a good size for two people, and was elegantly decorated and furnished. The beds were not quite a queen size, but bigger than a twin. They were soft and I loved how a soft and a firm pillow were both provided so you could choose which one you’d want to use (if not both). Otherwise there was a desk with a chair, and a lounge chair in the back by the window.

Speaking of the window, we happened to have a good view of Bole Intl Airport, so you can appreciate just how close to the airport we actually are.

Right in front of the beds was a large television screen. This had the lovely touch of displaying our names on the welcome screen. As you can see, it was near midnight at this point, so I went straight to the shower so I could go to bed.

Closer to the entrance was another dresser of sorts, and in it was an empty minibar, some shelving, and then on top a water boiler and cups to make tea or coffee, as well as two bottles of water.

The bathroom was beautifully appointed and felt luxurious and mostly practical. Right in front was a single sink with a large mirror. Beside the sink was a heap of all sorts of amenities, likely assuming transit passengers may not have brought these items with them. These included multiple dental kits, razors, combs, shower caps, and more. This felt like being at a Japanese hotel, where you can get all of these single use items in case you forgot them. I much appreciated this!

To the left was a tub, right by a window that allowed viewing from the bedroom. Honestly these sorts of things make no sense to me, though I assume the idea is to get natural light in. Fortunately there is a button that will bring down a curtain. The tub also has a shower head mounted above it, though no curtain to block the water from going all over. As such, I used the actual shower, which is opposite the tub.

Opposite the tub are both the shower and the toilet. The shower is a good size stall with a wall-mounted head, and an overhead rainfall-style head. To close off the stall there is a frosted glass slider, which also doubles as the door to the toilet. So, I guess you’d have to choose which stall you’d want to close…

Inside the shower stall, but also by the single you’ll find several multi-use bottles of amenities, including bath gel, conditioner and shampoo. These are all SkyLight Hotel branded, and smelled very nice. The numbers of these bottles was quite generous, with there being two each in the shower, and then also some by the sink.

Overall, the room we stayed in at the Skylight hotel was beautiful and well-designed. The aesthetics were great, and I loved the wooden finishes all over. The furniture, and especially the bed, were comfortable and soft, and I also loved the good amount of electrical outlets. The light controls were modern and plentiful, allowing full control of the different lights throughout the room. And finally, the bathroom was nicely appointed with all necessities, even if the use of the space was a little awkward, perhaps.

Checkout and Getting Back to Bole Intl ADD

Our voucher listed a shuttle pickup time of 7:30am for our 9am flight, but that seemed very optimistic to us, so we had set our alarm for 5:30am instead. Funnily enough, we actually got a call from the reception at 5:50am, and then a robot call a few minuted later, all telling us to wake up. While unnecessary for us, I thought this was a valuable service and shows Ethiopian Airlines cares about its passengers actually catching their flights.

We showered and were back downstairs in the lobby at around 6am to take the shuttle. These leave about once every 15 minutes most of the day, except late at night when it may be a bit larger of a gap given there’s fewer flights. We elected to have breakfast in the Ethiopian Airlines lounge, since we’d feel more relaxed that way.

The drive back was as uneventful as the drive to the hotel, and soon we were dropped off in front of the departures entrance of the terminal. Because we were picked up at the business class portion of the hotel, we were specifically dropped off at Ethiopian’s priority departures entrance:

From here we entered the terminal, went through entrance security, checkin, immigration and another security checkpoint before getting airside and visiting the Clou9d Business Class Lounge (review here). Note that all of these facilities are part of Ethiopian’s priority services for Cloud9 business class passengers. If you’re flying economy, you’d enter through a different entrance and would go through the general equivalents of these checkpoints and services.

Summary

Overall, I think Ethiopian Airlines SkyLight Hotel, including the services and arrangements surrounding it as well as the hotel itself, are excellent. Ethiopian makes it very easy to get from your plane to the shuttle and to the hotel, and checkin is quick and efficient. The room is beautifully designed and nicely appointed with all the facilities and amenities you’d need, and it’s just as easy to get back to the airport. Ethiopian is also generous with who gets complimentary access by including all business class passengers arriving and departing on Ethiopian Airlines.

While I can appreciate such long layovers are not for everybody, Ethiopian Airlines makes this pretty much as painless as possible. I think the only improvement in our experience would have come from staying at the in-terminal Skylight hotel, given it would have made the logistics even easier. Given that were went to the main one anyway, part of me would have liked the layover to be a few hours longer, so we could have had a proper breakfast at the hotel and then see the sights of Addis Ababa before our flight to New York.