Halima Aziz didn't have to be a hotelier to understand the value of early check-in. All she had to do was become a traveler.
Her voice grew more pained as she talked about arriving early in Europe after an overnight flight from the United States, and that her hotel check-in time was still hours away.
“The biggest problem with my day was not being able to check into the hotel before afternoon,” recalled Aziz, Hotel Director at Criterion Hospitality. “And in many places, you can’t book a room because a previous guest hasn’t checked out or housekeeping takes longer to clean the room.”
So Aziz was delighted to see that one of Criterion's hotels, London's Zedwell Hotel Piccadilly Circus, was taking part in a recent pilot program testing new paid early check-in software. She was more than pleased with the results for both the hotel and its guests.
We all hate being told to come back at 3 o'clock, it happens to me all the time. If we, as hoteliers, know the problem, why haven't we solved it yet?
Matt Welle – Mus
As personalized travel becomes more important and guest demands become routine, many in the hotel industry are rethinking how they handle early check-ins. Charging for the privilege risks further aggravating guests who have become accustomed to requesting free early check-in when they are lucky enough to find an empty room. But when communicated properly, early check-in fees can increase revenue while increasing the satisfaction of guests who want flexibility in their travel.
“As travelers, we know this is a problem,” said Matt Welle, CEO of Mews, a provider of cloud-based property management systems. “After all, we all hate being told to come back at 3 o'clock, and it happens to me all the time. “If we as hoteliers knew it was a problem, why didn’t we solve it?”
Welle believes part of the answer is that it's easier to tell guests to come back. This is especially true in hotels that lack the technology to facilitate smooth communication between housekeeping and the front desk. And for managers, there is little incentive to push for more early check-ins when mid-afternoon hours have become the industry standard.
But as hotels increasingly seek revenue streams beyond traditional bed, bar and breakfast offerings, and consumers dislike the so-called “junk fees” that some hotels apply to all guests, some hotel industry insiders are calling for early check-in fees to be a more equitable way of service. I see it as part of it. A system in which guests pay for auxiliary elements or attributes they desire.
And the more hotels offer this option, the more guests will demand it. Paul Rantilla, Plusgrade's senior vice president and chief revenue officer for hospitality ancillary, said the idea is gaining popularity.
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Plusgrade offers a “StayExtend” feature that allows customer hotels to monetize early check-ins and late check-outs. It's promoted as a way to “improve guest flexibility and optimize revenue,” and Rantilla predicts that early check-in or late check-out services will soon become as routine as upselling room upgrades.
“I think there’s an opportunity here,” Rantilla said, before recounting his experience on an overnight flight that landed in London hours before a scheduled meeting and his hotel’s designated check-in time. “I would have been willing to pay a reasonable price for early check-in.”
Can you meet your customers' expectations for the flexibility that personalized travel offers?
“It’s a really big deal,” Rantilla said.
Do you “assault” your guests or give them more of what they want?
Most hotels will consider early check-in requests, but the key word is request and it may be granted. If the Rooms are ready early. This isn't much help for people arriving early after an overnight flight or for families looking to make the most of the beach resort's amenities.
If you scroll through online travel threads, you'll find a variety of reactions to the idea of being charged for early check-in. Some people advise paying the night before to ensure immediate access upon arrival. Others express outrage at being charged when the room is ready to be occupied. Last year, a New York Post headline noted that hotels were “abusing” guests with “secret practices” by charging early check-in fees.
For those who believe in early check-in services, these accounts confuse early check-in with “junk fees” (resort fees, on-site parking fees, etc.). This has sparked consumer pressure in the US for hotels to be more transparent about check-in. Additional Fees.
Max Starkov, a hospitality and online travel technology consultant and strategist, believes that ancillary and property-based selling are better alternatives than charging an overall resort fee. He called it “the lazy hotelier’s attribute-based selling approach.” [ABS].”
Merchandising well thought out and executed by the hotelier [attribute-based sales] According to the strategy, instead of charging mandatory resort fees and other junk fees, they will end up making more money per guest than the much-disliked resort fees.
Max Starkov – Technical Consultant
“How can it be fair to charge guests 100% of the resort fee, which includes things like Wi-Fi, bottled water, in-room coffee, and parking, when only a small percentage of guests are using these services or amenities?” Starkov said. “If hoteliers implemented a well-thought-out and executed merchandising and ABS strategy instead of charging mandatory resort fees and other junk fees, we believe they could make more money per guest than resort fees, which hoteliers hate.”
The key to executing such a strategy is open communication, Rantilla said. This is especially important for early check-ins. Front desk staff are left in a difficult situation when they are left to explain policies to early-arriving guests.
“This is where technology needs to come in,” Rantilla said. He suggests offering early check-in when booking online or sending offers to customers a week before arrival to build the expectation of a paid service. Because making more rooms available early for those who want them isn't without cost.
“On days when hotels are operating at 100% capacity, it is very difficult to offer early check-in to guests,” said Criterion’s Aziz. “So the way we do it is we prioritize. [cleaning] For early check-out rooms (guests who check out before check-out time), we encourage our housekeeping staff to clean those rooms first before making them available to guests.”
In fact, hotel guests are renting rooms for about 20 hours, Rantilla noted. Is it really that surprising to pay more for an extra half day? “If you ask for more, there aren’t many other things you don’t have to pay for,” he said.
Early check-in test
Zedwell was already offering paid early check-in before joining the Mews test program late last year. But even though Zedwell's sleek lobby features self-service kiosks for check-in similar to those found at Apple stores, the system was cumbersome and created a bottleneck at the front desk.
The new system integrates the housekeeping app created by Mews with the rest of the hotel's technology stack, so guests who arrive early using one of the kiosks will be offered early check-in if rooms are available. At Zedwell, where rooms are available for around £150 a night, early check-in rates were £60 from 9am to noon, and £40 for regular check-in times from noon to 3pm.
Guests who are able to request early check-in when they first book a room are often happy to know that they can get straight to their room as early as 9 a.m. before they arrive, Aziz said.
[Early check-in is] It's a really cool concept. It's just that there are fees associated with it because it requires more housekeeping time to get it to work.
Halima Aziz – Criterion Hospitality
“It’s a really cool concept,” she said. She said, “It's just that there are costs involved because you have to invest more housekeeping time to get it to work properly.”
Early check-in cannot be guaranteed in the following cases: every Because of the guests, Zedwell generally had the data to predict how many rooms would be needed and when enough rooms would be available. And the fee helped ensure that only guests who really wanted or needed the service would request it. In the first six months of the program, Aziz estimated that about 5% of Zedwell guests chose the early check-in option.
“It’s important,” she said. “Mews allows us to look at our business model a little differently and say, ‘Wow, from a hotel perspective, early check-in can be a revenue generator and a driver,’” she said. This allows us to keep our rates a little lower, and the premium allocated for early check-in is only charged to those who actually want it.”
Hotel loyalty (still) has its perks
As guests come to expect more personalized travel, Rantilla predicts that hotels will feel greater pressure to reserve more rooms for early check-ins or late departures.
“We need to allow people the flexibility to customize their stay,” Rantilla said. “I think it’s incumbent upon hotels to collect data, understand demand and understand how they operate,” she said. Because I think that's where people go. There aren’t many companies that don’t think, ‘Okay, we have to make sure we can accommodate the requests and needs of our guests.’”
This marks a significant change for major hotel chains, where early check-in policies are sometimes combined with rewards programs and policies often vary among individual franchises.
We need to allow people the flexibility to customize their stay. … Because I think that's where people go.
Paul Rantilla – Plus rating
For example, IHG One Rewards members who qualify for one of the top two tiers can receive early check-in if rooms are available. Hyatt's top tier includes priority room access. Marriott Bonvoy's highest tier, Ambassador Elite, offers the 'Your24' benefit, which allows guests to choose their check-in and check-out times. For example, if you are arriving late, you can choose a 9 PM check-in and keep your room until 9 PM on the day of departure.
As much as Mews' Welle embraces the idea of paid early check-in, he also supports the chain's view of linking services and loyalty memberships. But he wonders if he's missing an opportunity by not offering paid early check-in to non-members. The revenue generated from the fee can cover the cost of cleaning rooms early and reporting their condition to the front desk.
“If I can prove that you have revenue items. [chief financial officer] Or an owner may get excited when a problem suddenly arises that requires a solution,” Welle said. Welle's company plans to soon add late checkout options for customers. “If I can prove that my hotel’s average revenue per guest is higher than the revenue of the property next door, this creates this new incentive.”
But the hotel's biggest interest isn't in profits, Welle argued. Paid programs provide more rooms for guests who really want or need early check-in, all in the name of customer satisfaction.
In hotel services, until early check-in becomes more of a priority, “the people who suffer the most are the guests because they have to wait for their rooms to come back,” he said.
And that misses the point of hospitality's greatest promise, Welle said. “You want to get as many people into that room as possible. [when they want] Because that’s when they really start to enjoy the experience.”
Phocuswright Europe 2024
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