You organize your vacation, book a hotel, and the notice is usually always the same: entry from 3 p.m.. For those who carry many suitcases and arrive early, this causes more than one headache, and hotels know this well. In fact, they are cashing in on it.
Hotel hours change. Before 2020, it was normal for check-in time (check-in) was at 2:00 p.m. and the departure time (check out) was at 12:00. Since the reopening of hotels after the pandemic, the chains have been pushing these schedules towards others that of course make your operation easier. Nowadays it is common to find that the check-in It cannot be done before 15:00 and the check out It’s at 11:00 or 12:00.
The “kellys” have a very valid point.. There is a reasonable argument for this change: as a Hotusa spokesperson explains in El PaísThese schedules ensure that cleaning teams have enough time to leave rooms spotless. Those who do this cleaning, the so-called kellys, confirm this, and clarify that those four hours give them room for maneuver because the average is that each worker cleans between 20 and 30 rooms a day. That is totally logical, but hotels are also taking advantage of the circumstance.
Welcome to the “Early check-in“and to”Late check-out“. Although no hotel chain explicitly recognizes it, a Barceló spokesperson did admit that this opens a new avenue of business. In recent times the options “early check-in” and “late check-out” in various hotel chains so that customers can enter between one and two hours before and leave between one and two hours later. These options, of course, have an extra cost that means that hotels can in turn have an additional source of income that they did not have before.
If you are a loyal customer, you can enter earlier and leave later. Other chains offer these extended hours to members of their loyalty programs. Marriott allows your clients of the Gold Elite program leave two hours later with a minimum of 25 nights a year. Those in the Platinum Elite program have 50 nights per year. Hyatt, Hotusa and Melia they do the same. The pattern is identical in all cases: flexible access to schedules is not a right of the guest, but a privilege of the loyal customer.
The trap of loyalty services. Hotel chains’ points programs operate on a disturbing premise: if you concentrate all your stays in a single hotel brand, you recover services that were previously standard for any customer. Those early check-in and late check-out They are the clearest example, but the list includes other benefits such as room upgrades, free breakfasts, access to executive lounges or added connectivity services. What was once courtesy is now a reward for your loyalty. A loyalty that, yes, you pay while you lose some ability to choose.
A fantastic idea except for the occasional tourist. The chains consulted in the text agree on the same idea: these changes make it possible to improve the experience of frequent customers, and at the same time make possible more efficient management of resources. What they don’t say is that the model has a clear winner, and it’s not the occasional traveler. The tourist who travels two weeks a year, arrives at his destination on an early morning flight and books through a conventional tour operator is doomed. Pay a higher rate, do not accumulate redeemable points and wait hours in the lobby or you are forced to pay extra.
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