A Hotel Well Worth the Buck & FULL 24 Hour Stay!

Are You As Thrilled As We Are About the Emerging 24-Hour Hotel Stay Trend?

Posted by Hotelchatter | June 26, 2013 at 9:33 AM | by wakeandwander 

We've all been there. You show up late to your hotel, go to sleep, and wake up to 11 a.m. check out looming before you've even thought about having breakfast. So much for experiencing the hotel, and the fact that we paid full rate to go to bed and wake up doesn't make it any easier. Before we've had a chance to really relax and enjoy the property, we're collecting our toiletries from the bathroom and asking if we can store our luggage for a few hours.

No more hanging around the lobby until check-in time! Whatever the reason, be it due to delays or out of necessity, hotel guests have always had to swallow the lack of a prorating policy when it comes to the bill for your room. You pay the same amount whether you arrive right on time for 3 p.m. check in or travel arrangements bring you in a few hours later. As hotels continue to search for creative and competitive ways to fill empty rooms and push capacity, they might have just stumbled upon the most reasonable of them all: The idea of renting the room for a full 24-hours from the time of check-in.

We've come across a few hotels that have experimented with this idea, and we've also seen hotels become more flexible in offering late check-outs. Finally, we might be close to turning the corner, and we might just be able to get a better bang for our buck because of it.

To us, the idea of a 24-hour room rate and additional late-checkout concepts are loaded with common sense, and we hope to see them continue to catch on. Why wouldn't we want the option for a full 24-hours? The consequences of this all fall in the lap of the hotels, which now have a scheduling and room-turnover nightmare on their hands. Because of that, most hotels understandably have rolled it out as a separate package and currently charge more for the privilege. We'd like to see flexible arrival and departure times become more standard and less of an add-on (perhaps even going as far to break down rooms to an hourly rate), but for now, we're at least thankful for the opportunity to tack on hours if we feel the need.

Have you benefited from any of the new late check-out/24-hour room policies? Let us know where and whether you found it worth the price tag.

[Photo: HotelChatter ]