24-hr check-outs: Durable trend or a passing fad?

When a customer vacates a seat in a restaurant, it becomes almost immediately available to the next customer, and commerce continues with nary a pause. When a passenger vacates a bus, train, or airline seat, it’s quickly made available to the next passenger with a valid ticket. But when a guest vacates a hotel room, it doesn’t immediately become marketable to the next guest. And therein lies the reason why the hospitality sector is conflicted by the growing demand for 24-hour check-outs.

Let’s look at a typical hotel guest who books himself a room in a hotel at 7 pm on a day. He is paying a day’s rent i.e. a cycle of 24 hours — until 7 pm, the following day. But the global industry practice is to follow a standardised check-out time of 12 pm every day. The guest must check out at the given time, or else, he will be billed for the next day as well.

This is an industry norm, dictated by logistical and planning-related requirements. But many guests are now wondering whether in the 21st century, they should be punished for the sluggishness in the system. Many hotels too have begun offering 24-hour check-outs as a differentiator.

Work begins when guests leave

“It is noted that 24-hour check-out in hotels have become a popular trend today. While such services are a value-add service component, it is not logistical. Unlike computers that operate check in and check out at a faster pace, it takes a while for rooms to be set in order, where the hotel staff will be around to clean them after non-standard check-out times,” luxury hotel Howard Johnson Bengaluru Hebbal General Manager Abhimanyu Kayastha said.

“Over 95 per cent of hotels (budget and luxury) worldwide follow the norm of 12 noon as the standard check-out time, which aids in steady operations. Preparing a room takes an hour or two, or usually a full housekeeping shift,” said Siddharth Goenka, Managing Director of Bengaluru-based business property, Octave Hotel.

A similar view was echoed by hospitality expert Bobby George: “The whole planning surrounding hospitality is kept with the standard time in mind. Passengers arriving on flights in the morning would be made to get a room as soon as possible. Even travel itineraries are designed with this scene in mind. If guests check out at a common time, it will be easier for the housekeeping to prioritise their activities.”

When guests leave a room, a dedicated team of housekeepers get down to remaking the bed, floor, bathroom, minibar and other facilities on offer, to turn everything as good as new. While the laborious process takes a lot of time, there may be instances when guests might be inconvenienced.

George, however said, “When a guest is booked into a property, he’s made aware of the check-out time. Any issues in this regard must not be considered a grievance, since it is all about adding volume to a business — in this case, room availability at a given time.”
Hoteliers aver that while those guests with requests to check out at a particular time may be inconvenienced, new arriving guests would face greater inconvenience if they are not allotted a room quickly. If a very flexible room check-out policy is adopted, the seamless flow of guests leaving a room and new ones arriving may be disrupted, since there is no guarantee that a room is available at a given time if an occupied guest chooses to vacate late, they argue.

Many open to 24-hour check-outs

While the debate over 24-hour check-out rages, the question shifts from one segment to the other. The luxury, upscale players stick to a standard check-out time, and other members belonging to business, budget, leisure, resort, inns and lodges, and motel properties, are believed to be in a better position to handle flexible check-outs.
“We’ve always believed that there ought to be 24-hour check-outs in the industry. It’s a valuable feature that will serve the new dynamic traveler better, and also benefit business,” budget hotel chain OYO Rooms Chief Executive Officer Ritesh Agarwal said.
Stayzilla portal Founder and Chief Executive Officer Yogendra Vasupal chipped in, “When a guest pays Rs 10,000, he expects that he be provided a room immediately. Time is money for people checking into luxury hotels. For a guest seeking a modest room at Rs 1,500, more value is expected for money spent. The latter may wait for a room and make full use of it, on getting one. The opportunity cost might be different for smaller properties.” In his view, people on the move such as tourists, pilgrims, small businessmen and bus travelers from small towns are those guests who seek a 24-hour value for money spent. He, however, acknowledged that Stayzilla’s analytics has detected that enquiries for 24-hour check-outs were among the most popular in its search filter. Vasupal added that even though housekeeping is a major component for upscale hotels, it is a greater burden for budget properties which are understaffed in the event of more guests arriving.

For a budget hotel chain such as OYO Rooms, which relies on 85 per cent occupancy at all times to maintain economies of scale even as it aims to retain a USP of ultra cheap rents, it becomes a constraint to balance out with an absolute 24-hour check-out time. The company operates such a model in only few of its 200 properties across India. “Offering 24-hour check-outs is more of an amenity. A standard check-out time makes rooms available for occupancy almost immediately. We have rooms from as low as Rs 899, which keeps us going. A 24-hour check-out may hit occupancy, and with it our business, since we might be forced to hike rent,” Agarwal said.

Some offer extended check-outs

Guests arrive and depart, and each of them have different preferences. Hotels have tried to come out with novel schemes and models to address the rising instances of guests wanting additional services. A few are offering what they call ‘extended check-out’ lest they antagonise a guest.

“As Howard Johnson Bengaluru Hebbal doesn’t offer 24-hour check-ins and check-outs, there have been instances when guests have requested us to extend the service to them depending on their requirements, which is not a matter of inconvenience as we accept the requests if urgent or important, subject to room availability,” Kayastha said.  
Unlike resorts and leisure hotels, guests at a business hotel demand primarily bed and breakfast. Guests arrive for work and need a place to sleep at night. “At a business hotel, it is quite flexible for early check-in and late check-out, depending on guests’ preferences,” Goenka said.

“At OYO Rooms, one of the ways that we deal with any problem emerging out of 24-hour check-outs is to extend check-out/stay for some time (half-day), and ask the guest to only pay extra for the extended time. The guest may have to pay a little more, or sometimes we even make it complementary. It’s a big return for a small investment,” Agarwal said.

Twenty-four-hour check-outs become viable only if guests are willing to adjust, because without their understanding, it would seldom work. An option that hotels may consider is to offer 70 per cent occupancy and keep the remaining 30 per cent rooms as buffer to handle these scenarios and as a revenue option, Vasupal said.

Technology is another way by which check-outs can be handled efficiently, enabling hotel staff to process guest movements proactively. “The global trends currently are express check-outs, eliminating paperwork and having everything done electronically on computers. Also the facility of mobile check-in and check-out is something that many hotels are opting for as an alternate for a jet-set traveler,” JW Marriott Mumbai Sahar General Manager Saeid Heidari said. “Our hotel is flexible in terms of offering check-out services. Services are made available as per the needs of the guest. The reception is operational 24 hours and as per the norms, the check-out time in the hotel is 12 pm. We also offer in-room check-out through the wireless electronic terminal,” he said.

Even tour operators are working towards making their guests’ travel more joyous and comfortable. According to Jatinder Paul Singh, Senior Vice President and Head, Sales and Distribution, Leisure Travel (Outbound), Thomas Cook (India): “At Thomas Cook India, we always recommend our guests to reconfirm the check-in and check-out details prior to their departure to avoid any inconvenience. While it is a hotel’s discretion to immediately grant or deny occupancy to guests on the basis of availability, they usually take almost 3-4 hours to make comfortable arrangements for the next guest on arrival.”

As the hotel industry grows, integrating technology, rolling out new products, new offerings, and new services to cater to discerning new-age guests, the 24-hour check-out question, becomes more relevant. In crowded restaurants, where famished customers wait 30 minutes for a 60-minute meal, restaurateurs have arrived at solutions such as dining only by reservation, home delivery over a designated distance, and reserving the right to admission. Hoteliers will also have to match up in streamlining housekeeping and other logistical bottlenecks, to serve more guests better in the burgeoning India hotel industry.