Flexible check-in delivers full value

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 24/12/2004 (7679 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

SOME hotels have spent their time wisely while awaiting the return of travellers. And all indications are that that day has come: People are on the move again, notably the lucrative business traveller whose absence in the past four years has sent the travel industry into a tailspin.

They return to a market in which hotel rooms are far more likely to offer softer beds, in-room massage and wireless Internet access. But there’s one new wrinkle that takes first prize as the sweetest offering for travellers since the invention of the minibar — a blindingly obvious innovation that was just waiting to be picked up.

24 hours

It’s the 24-hour flexible check-in policy, which means if you check in at 5 p.m., you stay till 5 p.m.; check in at 9 a.m. and your checkout time is 9 a.m.

This is bound to get the attention of travellers who are fed up with having to lug their bags to a meeting because checkout time is 11 a.m., or who have ever faced the indignity of having to nap on lobby sofas because their international flight arrived early in the morning but check-in time isn’t until 3 p.m.

It also means guests are getting a full 24-hour stay for their money, not the 20-hour stay they have become accustomed to paying for.

No matter whether you are in Warsaw or Wawa, Ont., it seems to have been a universal hotel custom to require guests to check out at 11 a.m. and check in at 3 p.m. The rule is so deeply entrenched that some travellers will eat the cost of an extra night’s stay for the sake of a couple of extra hours in their room, or buy into special promotional packages touting a late check-out.

Opened in October

“Basically, hotels have been stealing from people’s pockets,” says Massimo Ianni, the general manager of the new Faena Hotel + Universe in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The stunning Phillippe Starck-designed hotel, his first in Latin America, opened on Oct. 15 with the new policy in place.

“Guests are now getting what they pay for,” he says. “The feedback has been great.”

The Faena isn’t the only hotel to do this but it is one of relatively few. The Peninsula Beverly Hills won recognition from Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration for pioneering the innovation. Earlier this year, Raffles Hotels and Resorts, a luxury line of international hotels, brought out its 24-hour check-in/check-out policy.

So if it is what travellers want, and might even add to hotels’ bottom line, why aren’t they all hopping on the bandwagon.

Well, it seems a flexible check-in policy wreaks havoc on sophisticated hotel inventory systems programmed for traditional check-in/check-out times. How would reservations agents or front desk clerks know how many beds are available on a given day if people are climbing in and out of them?

Ianni says what makes life easier for guests makes life harder for hotel staff. And the fact his beautiful hotel has just 83 rooms doesn’t make it any easier than if it had 300 rooms. Indeed, juggling the limited inventory is even harder.

He says it means the hotel has to forego a paid room night if the guest in the only available room is checking out at 6 p.m. and a new guest wants to check in at 4 p.m.

The Faena, incidentally, opened as Buenos Aires was recovering from its worst financial crisis ever. The Argentine peso meltdown of 2001 saw the city erupt in demonstrations and hotel occupancies fall to less than 30 per cent. So it seems that out of chaos springs opportunity — and some very bright ideas.

Deborah Stokes is the Travel Editor of the National Post.