Holiday Inn Express London Gatwick – Crawley
The Holiday Inn Express at Haslett Avenue East / The Squareabout in Three Bridges, Crawley (RH10 1UA), has been reported as refugee/asylum accommodation. On 9 August 2024 it was the focus of a protest met by a counter-protest of around 500 people[1]Press. It is a separate hotel from the larger Arora Hotel Gatwick Crawley, which we cover separately.
Capacity
138
rooms (commercial)
Per night
£170
per resident
Annual
£8.6m
estimated
Background
The Holiday Inn Express London Gatwick – Crawley is a roughly 138-room budget hotel at Haslett Avenue East / The Squareabout in Three Bridges, near Crawley town centre and Gatwick Airport. Crawley has been one of the larger asylum-hotel towns in the South East: Home Office figures reported 432 asylum seekers in Crawley hotels at the end of December 2024, across all of the town's contingency hotels[2]Press.
The 9 August 2024 protest
On 9 August 2024, during the wave of hotel-focused protests that summer, the Holiday Inn Express in Three Bridges was the target of a demonstration. An anti-racism campaign live report named the hotel (Haslett Avenue East, RH10 1UA) as being used to accommodate refugees and recorded a counter-protest of around 500 people[1]Press. The Home Office has not publicly named this hotel as asylum accommodation, and the operator, resident numbers and start/end dates are not confirmed in public sources.
Cost analysis
No site-specific cost figure has been published, so the following is an illustrative benchmark only. At the £170 per person per night Migration Observatory figure[3], a roughly 138-room hotel at full asylum occupancy would imply order-of-magnitude exposure of about £23,000 per night. The May 2025 NAO contract review put the average per-hotel run rate across the portfolio at about £5.84 million per year[4]NAO.
Per-person per-day cost stack (benchmark)
£170- Hotel rate (room + three meals)£10059%
- Weekly cash allowance£74%
- Legal aid & casework£127%
- NHS / interpreter / utilities£1911%
- Contractor / security overhead£3219%
Cost in context
HIX Gatwick Crawley
£170
benchmark
UK asylum hotel avg
£170
NAO
Crawley budget hotel
£75
commercial
Hostel bed
£30
commercial
Timeline
Timeline
Pre-2024
Operates as a commercial Holiday Inn Express at Three Bridges, Crawley
By Aug 2024
Reported as refugee/asylum accommodation
Named by an anti-racism campaign source as housing refugees.
9 Aug 2024
Protest and counter-protest
Protest met by a counter-protest of around 500 people outside the hotel.
After 2024
Status not officially confirmed
Home Office has not named the site; operator and dates unconfirmed.
Sources
- Stop the far right: live reports, 9 August 2024 — Stand Up to Racism, Aug 2024
Stand Up to Racism's live report names the Holiday Inn Express at Haslett Avenue East / The Squareabout, Three Bridges, Crawley (RH10 1UA) as a hotel used to accommodate refugees, targeted by a protest met by a counter-protest of around 500 people on 9 August 2024.
- Fewer asylum seekers in Crawley living in hotels — Sussex Express, Mar 2025
Home Office figures reported by the Sussex Express show 432 asylum seekers accommodated in Crawley hotels at the end of December 2024 - a town-wide total across all Crawley contingency hotels, not a single-site figure.
- Asylum accommodation in the UK — Migration Observatory, University of Oxford, Aug 2025
£170 per person per day in hotels (2024/25 average); used for per-hotel estimates and food/utilities breakdowns.
- The Home Office's asylum accommodation contracts — National Audit Office, May 2025
222 hotels in use; £1.296 billion annual (2024/25); per-hotel approximately £5.84 million.