Landing in Europe at 6 a.m. and being told to come back at 4 p.m. for your room is the kind of travel misery that feels avoidable, until you realize it’s how hotels are built to operate. Check-in has drifted later, checkout has crept earlier, and on overnight arrivals or 2 a.m. departures you can wind up paying for extra “nights” you can’t even use.
With better forecasting and housekeeping tools, hotels could sell time more flexibly, up to true 24-hour stays, turning a guest pain point into a real revenue opportunity.
If you travel to India you might arrive at 1 a.m. Surely you need to go to bed when you get there. So you wind up paying for a hotel the night before. But then when your flight back departs at 2 a.m. what do you do? You need to leave for the airport around 11 p.m., which is far beyond what hotels will do even for elite late check-out. So you wind up paying for an extra night you don’t “really” use. Now you’ve paid for two more nights than you actually “stayed.”
Hotels have been squeezing how long you can stay in the room when paying for a stay. It might seem logical that each day you pay for gets you 24 hours, but that isn’t true at all. Flexible check-in times, though, are both an opportunity for great customer service and also increased revenue.
- Hotels need time between when a guest checks out and when the next one checks in, so there’s a gap.
- The gap has been growing. Check-in times that used to be 3 p.m. may not be 4 p.m. or 5 p.m. Check-out times that used to be Noon may have shaved back to 11 a.m.
- Very few hotels are flexible about their check-in and check-out times, at least until the last minute and if they know they aren’t fully booked but still fully staffed with housekeeping.
For decades, hotels have organized their operations around mid-afternoon check-in and late-morning checkout. This structure has become second nature not just for hoteliers but for guests and booking platforms.
Many procedures, from housekeeping schedules to night audit routines, were established long before sophisticated reservation systems. The industry collectively fell into a pattern that stuck. Large hotel chains and independent establishments often conform to these norms to align with traveler expectations. When booking accommodations around the world, guests are accustomed to these time windows.
Housekeeping is a big part of that – each room needs cleaning, restocking, and inspection before it’s ready for the next guest. Standardizing times simplifies housekeeping shift patterns and laundry cycles. Flexibility would require more dynamic scheduling models, which are usually more expensive. However,
- A mid-tier hotel is structured around its own operations and costs. They’re trying to deliver the hotel product as efficiently as possible. Guests conform to the needs of the property and help minimize its costs. Maybe there’s no room service, just a grab and go, or food is delivered in cardboard and paper. Guests might check-in using a kiosk instead of with a person. And they arrive and depart in a manner which maximizes the efficiency (and lowers the cost) of the housekeeping operation.
- A premium hotel is structured around meeting the needs of the guests. It achieves a premium rate by delivering a premium service. That means investing more in staff and products that elevate the guest experience in case those elevate a stay. As soon as a customer enters the hotel’s doors, they are a guest meant to be taken care of. It’s possible that a hotel is full on a given night, long before check-in time, but if so then the guest is immediately cared for. Is there a temporary standard room that might be assigned rather than the premium one they booked? Can they use the gym or spa? Would they like a complimentary coffee? How can the guest be made as comfortable as possible?
Yet hotels have been shaving housekeeping expense. They often employ as few housekeepers as possible, and even refuse to upgrade elite guests into available suites to avoid having to clean a larger space. (Or cleaning the suite, but not inspecting it, so that it isn’t “available” when the elite member checks in.)
Since most hotels market their product on a “per-night” basis, and you’re not paying for a 24-hour block. Revenue managers adjust rates day by day based on demand. A 24-hour clock from check-in complicates yield management forecasting and pricing.
These times generally work for corporate travelers, who fly out in the morning and arrive in the afternoon or evening – or if taking an overnight flight might head straight to the office before their hotel. And these travelers go to work from their hotel on the last day of their stay, usually checking out early.
- That’s not great for many long haul trips, where passengers arrive in Europe in the morning or South Asia in the middle of the night. And that’s especially challenging for leisure travelers in those markets.
- Resort guests are more likely to want to check out later, which is also why late check-out commitments usually don’t include guarantees at resorts (plus resort rooms may take longer to prepare between guests, especially beach resorts with guests tracking sand!)
- And traditional managed corporate travel has been a smaller part of occupancy mix since the pandemic, with leisure travel picking up and business trips often mixed with personal by those who can work from home (or anywhere) at least part of the week.
There are real opportunities, though, both to better-accommodate guests and maximize revenue with more flexible models that better planning software can facilitate. An airport hotel, for instance, might sell rooms in 4-, 8-, or 12-hour blocks (selling the same room ‘night’ more than once), or even guarantee a 24-hour stay from the time of arrival (for an upcharge).
This won’t work everywhere! But it can work beyond airports, with day use rates in major cities still useful for meetings, naps or showers or as a place to work.
Managing this profitably requires strong forecasting and staff scheduling, while Property Management Systems often still assume a 24-hour day runs from approximately 3:00 p.m. – 11:00 a.m.
Starwood managed this when they introduced their ‘Your24’ benefit to 75-night elite members in 2012.
- Check in whenever you wish, check out 24 hours later
- As long as you check in at 9 a.m. or later, you’d still be entitled to 4 p.m. late check-out
The benefit is now part of the Ambassador package at Marriott ($23,000 spend and 100 room nights annually) but it requires hotel approval and hotels seem to approve requests far less often than they did under Starwood.
Broadening this out requires better housekeeping management software, but there are new AI-driven solutions that handle workload distribution, real-time room status updates, and use predictive analytics to streamline tasks as rooms become available. Some platforms integrate front desk, maintenance, and housekeeping, using AI to adapt schedules instantly when guests check out early or request late departure.
At a minimum, a property could reserve a floor or room block for testing 24-hour stays to figure out housekeeping and pricing as a test while limiting the impact on the overall hotel.
Thanks, Gary. I’ll agree with your basic message this could be improved, but your example is a bit over-stated: “Now you’ve paid for two more nights than you actually stayed”. Right before that you point out that you may have landed 1:00 am, so for sure you did sleep that first night, and also enjoyed breakfast the next morning. As for departure, there’s not an International class hotel out there that won’t check your bags at the desk, so with a little time management you can make the check-out time and still enjoy your day before heading for the airport. Net-net, no extra nights paid for that you didn’t use.
Gary, if you think hotels are employeeing fewer room attendants intentionally, then you’re not dealing in reality. Even prior to the pandemic keeping a fully staffed housekeeping department was a challenge; since 2020 it’s damn near impossible. Your acumen of the other side of the business is lacking.
My bigger issue is that even those later check-in times aren’t being met. I can’t count the number of times I’ve arrived at the designated check-in time only to be told “your room isn’t ready; we’ll call you when it is.” Often, that call is never made; and often, that check-in time can be hours later than it was supposed to be. And, of course, there’s never any added time on the opposite end to compensate for the lost room time…
Airlines are able to do this 24-hour thing for their crew and hotels are probably required to accommodate last-minute changes too.
I think Kempinsky used to have a 24 hour policy but it quietly disappeared. Would love to know what happened.
There are a lot of hotels in India with a 24 hour policy if you book directly with them and not an online booking site (other than their own). That comes in handy if one arrives at 10 pm and the return flight is 12 midnight because one can check out at 9 pm and head to the airport.
The hotels can award bonus points if people on the app provide when they plan to leave, especially those with early flights. Give points upon checkout and cleaning services can jump on those leaving before 7am. Those arriving early can also let hotels know when the flights land. United and Marriott can partner up and share information.
@ Gary — IC Royal Ambassador provides 10 AM check-in and 4 PM check-out. Yes, the hotel cannot provide the required temporary room if it is 100% occupied, but out of 1,500 IC stays, we have probably encountered a wait less than a dozen times.
It’s not an insurmountable problem, hotels have been doing this for layover crews since Juan Trippe and Intercontinental Hotels started with luxury accommodations for passengers in 1946. I see no reason it cannot be adapted to all hotel customers. Hotels just want to define a day as 12-14 hours but charge like it’s 24.
For specific circumstances, DayUse can be helpful, especially if you have like 8+ hour layovers between flights in Europe onward to elsewhere.
Otherwise, that guaranteed 4PM late checkout (and 12PM early check-in, if available) through the Amex FHR program has saved me countless times. Better than any status.
Otherwise, Gary, you’re basically asking to book hourly hotels, and they’re usually not the… *ehem* ‘nicest’ places.
Sensible. Maybe you’re right and this is one of the instances where improving technology actually helps all parties but I wouldn’t bet on it. At least not any time soon.
@Christian — I’d bet on such a technology to mostly benefit those who own and control it, not the actual users, but, I guess I’m a filthy ‘commie’ for calling out that greed and exploitation, no?
There are some rare properties that do allow for odd hour check-in’s but most are located near airports, which is fine except when you arrive in Paris, London, Tokyo, etc., you probably want to go stay in town or to the resort hotel locations, which are very strict on check-in times at airports.
I stay at a lot of lower-end hotels that offer free breakfast or have breakfast available for free, or free to guests with status in the lobby. These have gotten worse over the years, where breakfast time has crept from 6 am to 6:30, and even 7 am for some. Thankfully, this seems to be moving back to 6 am lately, and there are hotel business properties that offer breakfast earlier, but again rare.
The approach I take is to arrive early in the day in Europe, etc. Drop off my bags at the hotel; I will check in later in the day and then go have breakfast and tour the town. This helps beat jet lag anyway.
The other point that could be made is that maybe it’s not the hotels that are at fault on all this. Maybe it’s the fact that airlines insist on red-eye flights to Europe, Hawaii, etc. Why not have more daytime flights, especially on short TATL hops from the US?
@DaninMCI — There are only a few, daytime TATL eastbound that I’m aware of, and they’re mostly NYC-LON, starting 8AM, arriving 8PM, on UA, BA, B6. Know of any others? (I think the issue is that those aircraft mostly then sit overnight before returning early the next morning westbound, because many European airports have curfews for late-night departures, like 11PM cutoff times, noise-reduction, etc.)
@ 1990 — Red card, anyone?
That’s why hotels use the term “nights” to infer you are only getting so many nights at a hotel and not a 24 hour period.
This is one of my biggest travel pet-peeves, and the India example is right on the nose.
Raffles Hotels (at least some of them) used to distinguish themselves by allowing you to check in whenever you wanted and have that start your own personalized single 24 hour “night” in the hotel. There were many trips where I choose to stay at a Raffles primarily for this reason – although it’s possible that this decision is why there are so many fewer Raffles hotels than there used to be (and the fact that they stopped doing it long ago and haven’t brought it back is some evidence of that).
I would imagine this is a tough sell for hotels. Things like this have been worked on for decades (e.g., satellite time slots and mainframe CPU times). The juggling act is impossible for humans, but well-designed computer programs could handle it. But, the troublesome variable is human behavior. Alex has reserved a noon check in on Tuesday with a 9am departure. Alex does leave the room until 11am. Oops, everything is out if sink if occupancy is high. If you can do all this and have revenue increase more than costs, great. Convince a hotel this will happen, tough.
Gary, what you left out is that more and more guests have elite status (mostly through credit cards) and I would imagine many will use (or try to use) the ability for later checkout times. And that delays the abilities for housekeeping to clean and prepare each room for the next set of guests. In addition, I see how much rooms are often left disaster areas for housekeeping, which also delays turnaround times. So I would rather the housekeeping staffs have enough time to do all of this backbreaking work.
Perhaps legislation is needed to say one day’s stay is defined as 24 hours from check in to check out.