A new app and website has publicly launched today which solves a real travel problem.
Hotels By Day lets you book hotel day-use rooms online.
The problem:
- Day rooms are really hard to book.
- You usually can’t book them online. I’ve booked them occasionally — the Sofitel Heathrow has day space on its website, but people often get confused and book those rates either for the wrong day or in place of overnight’s which are what they really want.
- Sometimes you call the chain to book them, sometimes you have to call the hotel directly.
Hotels By Day — website, and both iPhone and Android app — brings the inventory online.
The app uses geolocation to show the day rooms closest to you for booking same-day easily. But it also lets you book them in advance.
These can be really useful off of a long overnight flight, take a shower, take a nap.
Sometimes I wind up with super long layovers, especially connecting internationally on separate tickets, and a hotel is going to be much nicer than a contract airport lounge.
They suggest it’s great for working remotely while on a business trip (a competitor to Regus offices and Starbucks?) or to enjoy a daycation.
Their initial markets, available today, are New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and DC. Next month they will add day rooms at hotels in Los Angeles, Atlanta, Miami, and Fort Lauderdale. Following in the queue are Boston, Charlotte and San Francisco.
They estimate that 11% of rooms that are occupied two nights in a row are available for intra-day bookings due to early check-outs/late check-ins. And that’s the occupied rooms which have this inventory possibility. I love the business model, like Priceline and Uber it takes an underutilized resource and brings revenue to hotels while making a service available to travelers. And it solves a market failure, because it’s hard to book these kinds of rooms now.
And they’re giving away 5 free day rooms in the market of your choice.
- 3 nights drawn at random from comments on this post
- 2 nights selected by me from tweets that mention both @garyleff and @HotelsByDay
For avoidance of doubt, I receive no compensation for running this giveaway, I’m just passing along free day rooms to readers.
Enter to win on this blog.
- Answer the question in the comments to this post: What would you use a hotel day room for?
- Since three day rooms are being given away out of the comments, you may enter up to three times if yo have different uses for a day room.
- Contest is open until Noon eastern time on Friday, February 13.
- Winners (1 day room each) will be drawn with the help of random.org
Enter to win on Twitter.
- Follow @garyleff and @HotelsByDay
- Tweet what you would do with a day room booked through the site/app. Your tweet must mention both @garyleff and @HotelsByDay to be eligible.
- You may enter twice if you wish, because two day rooms are being given away in this fashion.
- Contest is open until Noon eastern time on Friday, February 13.
- I will select the winners (1 day room each) from tweets that (in my sole opinion) express great uses for the rooms/app.
Check out Hotels By Day and their Android and iPhone apps. I’ve download the Android app, it’s something I want handy on my phone for my travels. Readers get free day rooms. I’ll pay for mine. 🙂 Getting commenting and tweeting!
- You can join the 50,000+ people who see these deals and analysis every day — sign up to receive posts by email (just one e-mail per day) or subscribe to the RSS feed. It’s free. You can also follow me on Twitter for the latest deals. Don’t miss out!
The problem is the primary users of these rooms will be pimps, prostitutes and other people looking for a short interlude. Doesn’t exactly seem like the cleanest environment, so I would prefer to stay at hotels that don’t offer this service.
Day-room would be ideal for the WAY_TOO_EARLY arrival of overnight flights to shower and catch a nap before flying on.
When I have a positioning flight for international travel, a day room makes it easier to factor in a long layover in case of irrops.
Makes it easier to plan to leave plenty of room for a connection you don’t want to miss, by flying a red-eye the night before and having a private place to sleep and work before catching the important plane or ship.
I would use a hotel day room for a more comfortable way to relax during lengthy layovers.
Great to have an office for a day that isn’t an airport lounge.
Driving 6 hours to JFK for a flight to Milan – would like to get there by 4 pm, take a nap and a shower before our 10 pm flight. Thanks for the info and opportunity!
I book day rooms all the time. Most airport hotels have day rooms but good luck finding out about them without doing a lot of work. Even when I call the hotel direct I get incorrect info. I often fly into a city in the am and have a pm flight, especially flying overseas.
Would be great for those late flights so you won’t be “homeless” after 12pm checkout.
Nap while kids are at home with babysitter!
Nothing beats a long hot shower
Would love a layover shower and a nap after an international flight. Depending on the costs, I can see making this work to my financial advantage. Many times I’ve paid more for a flight to avoid a long layover because I didn’t want to sit in the airport for hours.
One thing I’d LOVE to see from chain hotels is bonus points for vacating a room by 7am or 8am or something to that effect which would allow them to book day rates.
Sooner than that is rolled out, though, it also allows them to have all their rooms ready earlier. If I’m entitled to stay til 4pm and they want to give someone else my room the next day, they have to compensate him for his room not being ready at check in time. They could offer me *less* to vacate the room in time for his check in, and in doing so they save themselves money and have 2 happy customers instead of just 1.
I do think some hotels are wary of a day rate because they don’t want to be thought of as an “hourly” hotel — which is what you think of for hookers and drug deals.
A quiet place to nap, check email, and decompress.
Those long international flights with layovers would be more bearable with a nap and shower.
A place to take a shower on a day trip somewhere.
Early morning flight arrivals on red eyes.
Staycation!
I would have a lot of use of this app. Especially on MRs, and like you, on long layovers.
This would come in handy for longer layovers
I would use this as a place for meetings with a sales team in a city.
What a great app! I’d use a day room to let my toddler nap, a necessity if anyone wants to enjoy vacation.
Like Nick, the illegal usages of the rooms came to mind, except around this area one could rent by the hour. Actually, one should be more concern with long stay motel. Management of some places take a blind eye to what guests are doing or the character of those who show up at all hours to visit a room and quickly leave.
A day room is the perfect solution for long layovers!
Would be a quiet place to prepare an important presentation, to be given later that same day.
A day room is a great option for local weddings with lots of time between the ceremony and the reception.
Would definitely use it to sleep after an early morning arrival flight!
If one is traveling and feeling somewhat ‘under the weather’, go place to rest and refresh, before meetings, etc.
This would be great for long layover during international trips.
Great for taking showers after long trips.
The best use of this is with overnight layovers with an early flight the next day. I’ve had a couple of layovers in London where I ended up only using 6 hours of the hotel so this would be perfect for that!
I would use for taking a shower to freshen up. Especially if I’m in a hot and humid climate.
If I have a long layover, I would use it to store stuff, take a nap or shower.
Hi Nick. Yannis, co-founder of HotelsByDay here to assure you that the service will not be used by nefarious characters. HotelsByDay and our hotel partners are aware of the negative stigma and the company’s messaging and marketing are intentionally honed to steer away from romance market (professional and amateur). How, you wonder?
1. Checks and balances in place: should a hotel flag a guest as inappropriate, that account, credit card, and name are flagged and blacklisted and therefore prevented from booking through HotelsByDay.
2. Messaging: as you can see from the press release and the messaging on the website, is targeting the business traveler with an expense account and the high end leisure traveler and suburban daytripper. We do not encourage romance in any way on the website or in marketing.
Take shower!
Pitstop for a long day trip to a nearby city.
a non-traditional date
I have kids, so I would also use it as a place to let the kids sleep around their naptime.
to succumb to jetlag for a powernap
I would like to take shower in a long layover!
perfect when on a MR with some layover time in the day to refresh!
I would use a hotel day room for a hot shower and hot tea (hopefully the room has a coffee maker). A nap sounds too risky. I would save that for the plane.
I will sleep like a rock during traveling.
I will enjoy watching the superbowl, just in front of the high-resolution TV in a hotel.
I will take a good rest to get used to the jetlag after an international trip.
On my first (and only) overseas flight in October, I got thrown up on my the man behind me. Because our flight was delayed from DFW by 2 hours, we missed our connecting AMS-ORK flight and had an unexpected 8 hr layover in AMS. With no luggage (all checked), Not anticipating id be thrown up on, and the airline wasn’t helping out. We ended up purchasing a couple of hours in the hotel in Airport. It was pricey, but allowed us to clean up, recharge, and enjoy AMS for a few hours.
For a nooner.
For an intra day nap.
For a quickie shower.
Best thing is to take a hot shower!