As I said if you are one of the categories above, it takes less than 1h to wait, 40 mins to get to the hotel (if there's no traffic), and it really depends on when they pick you up. When I was on my own I was told to wait at 8:45 am for 14:50 flight to YVR - and the damn van didn't come until 10:15!!!!!! I already checked out so I was tired and hungry (TK didn't even pay for my damn breakfast at the hotel). Then when I was with Mr, we weren't picked up until 11:30 for a 15:00 flight to IAH - we were in Y but C pax stayed at the same hotel too and the breakfast was crap so we skipped it.

The second time we didn't expect to be picked up that late and we talked about it and decided to get a room - you can't beat the privacy to sleep even for a few hours. Because of my previous experience we even went down to the front desk to keep asking if it was true that they were going to pick us up at 11:30! It really was 11:30. So we had about 10h in the hotel.

Don't count on "going out and explore the area" because both transit hotels I stayed were in the middle of somewhere of nowhere.