I’ve seen a few articles that have basically said HOURLY MOTEL RATES - NOT JUST FOR HOOKERS ANYMORE but I’m not really buying it. I travel a lot and I know a lot of people who travel a lot but have never really seen any real reason to rent a room for just a few hours. Yes you can use them to shower but unless you’re the jetsetter who flies into town then flies back out four hours later why not just rent the room for the whole night?
Naps for office workers?
Naps and a shower for people on long car rides? Maybe even people preferring to drive at night as the roads are less busy then?
Drug deals? “No, I’m not handing you a suitcase full of dollar bills in the hotel lobby. It gets disapproving looks. And the clerk will be weird about us testing the automatic rifles you will bring in the other suit case. Let’s rent a hotel room for a few hours instead”.
Once when traveling in Europe, my buddies and I got delayed. We arrived at our destination after the Hostel we were planning to stay in had closed their doors for the night. It was 2am and we only needed a place to lie down for about 4-5 hours. I wish we could have found an hourly rate place, but instead we had to pay for a whole night.
ETA: Oh hey, Maastricht! It was Amsterdam, by the way.
Are you literally talking about renting by the hour, or are are you talking about the hotels where you can rent a room from say 10 am to 4 pm rather than the usual "check in after 3 pm, check out before 11 am? Because the “day rates” can be useful if you have a long block of time between when you arrive and when you next have to be somewhere - a long layover, say or if you will arrive in town at 10 am for an event that starts at 6 pm. For the second, if you are staying the night after the event, you could book the hotel starting the night before you arrive, but my understanding is that day rates are much less expensive than overnight rates.
Personally, there have been multiple times I’ve been out working and had a four or so hour break in the middle of the day where I wished I had the option of an hourly hotel so I could unwind and rest/nap for a few hours rather than kill time in a restaurant or sleeping in my car.
Interviews? Meeting? Need a room for a few hours with a table and a few chairs? Especially useful if both parties are on the road for some reason.
In China, at bus stations, there are frequently several “family rooms”, where women traveling with children can take a room, either free or at an hourly rate, to have a secure and comfortable place to wait during a bus connection of several hours. It is furnished like a hotel room. My wife and I were offered one during a wait for an onward bus.
I’ve had many occasions where I’ve needed a hotel for a couple of hours. Two such examples:
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Going to an out of town wedding, where I want to get changed when I get there so as not to crumple my clothes and ruin my make up on the way up, but I’ll be arriving way before the hotel’s check in time.
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Going from a business meeting to an evening reception, again requiring a change and a refresh.
The lack of such hotel rooms has often meant an uncomfortable change in a hotel toilet.
If I run a motel, what’s the upside of renting on an hourly basis if I really intend to run a clean, decent place? You want to rent to a room for four hours to “take a nap”. I’m getting four hours rental, but the bed needs to be changed and the place tidied up. If you’re a slob, I need to do even more cleaning. This means I have to pay people to do that maybe two or three times a day for a single room. What’s the upside here?
I only know of two hourly motels, and they both look like seedy dives. You probably have to worry about bed bugs and God knows what else. I wouldn’t let my cat sleep there.
Did these articles go into any details? Seems like the answer might have been there.
That’s why you charge a higher per-hour rate than you would for an all-night stay.
There was a Shark Tank episode where a guy had an app for this (mostly). The hotel from after checkout to like 4pm are mostly empty so his venture was to book those rooms for business travelers and the like for the exact reasons mentioned above.
You would charge accordingly. But, yes, I do see what you are saying. You have to pay for the cleaning crews to come possibly twice per day.
I would think that this business model would only work in a city with a lot of business and travel, like NYC, DC, etc.
When my cousin got married, they rented a bus to bring in most of our family (from WAY out of state) to the wedding and reception. They also rented a couple of motel rooms to give people a place to freshen up and change (if they wanted) before the ceremony. IIRC, they rented the rooms for the whole day, but they were only needed for a couple of hours, and no one slept in them. Or had sex, as far as I know.
Since the answers to this will be mostly anecdotal, let’s move it to IMHO.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
If you want to run a really clean decent place you might choose to keep 1 or more of the cleaning staff on after the rush in case of emergencies. Those cleaning staff would be idle most of the time maybe running a towel or replentishing soap. A few short term stays might make it profitable.
Long daytime layovers on international flights, or between an international and internal flight. I’ve had a 17 hour layovers in Paris and a 20 hour layover in Jakarta. After a 10 to 13 hour redeye a shower and a nap are worth it. Because of the timing, I ended up paying for a whole day, but if I could have paid for a shorter time I would have welcomed it.
Most hotels don’t allow check ins until 3pm. So if you want a place to store your luggage, take a shower, watch TV or nap, hourly or half-day rates would be nice.
People keep mentioning “getting to an event early” as a reason (flight comes in early, getting to the wedding early, etc.) Why not just ask for an early check in at the place you’ll eventually be? If you’re a preferred customer (as the jet-setting friends may be), you can usually get that, especially if you mention it at the time of reservation. Or if you need to secure your luggage, a lot of hotels will hold your luggage for a few hours until check in.
I know that won’t always be the case, but I think it covers a few.
I used to go to out-of-town cycling events (century rides), which usually involves getting up early and driving a couple of hours to the event. After a 100-mile bike ride, I’d change clothes and sometimes take a nap in the car before heading home. A shower and a nap in a motel would have been nicer. I imagine hikers, mountain climbers, marathon runners, triathletes, kayakers, etc. are often in similar situations.