Request late check in or book extra night?
 

If you arrive at the hotel on Friday at 5 AM, should you reserve a room for Thursday or just request a late check in?

Check in is usually at 2PM so I'm thinking the rational choice is to book the previous night?

I'm thinking if you guaranteed your reservation on a credit card and decent hotel would hold the reservation throughout the night and in more than one instance they have. Perhaps you stay in different sorts of places.

I don't think you got the question Dukey.

I think you mean request an early check-in on Friday.

To assure you have a room you can get into as soon as you arrive, reserve (and pay for) Thursday as well. If you have guaranteed your room to a credit card, they will hold your room, no question if you reserve for Thursday night but get there Friday morning.

The other option is to request an early check-in on Friday. The hotel may or may not be able to accommodate you on this request. Some hotels offer a special rate for a partial day like this, but many do not.

You could try requesting an early check in on Friday, but unlikely you'd get it that early. They might let you do it for a fee though, and only if the room was vacant upon arrival.

I don't see how a late check in would help unless you've booked Thursday night.

Have you looked into day rooms? They're set up for this very purpose, but can be hard to come by. They're mostly found in airport hotels. You could spend time at a hotel with a day room, then move to your other room at 2 pm.

Day rooms are usually available until 6 pm.

Yes, I meant to say "early" check-in.

I arrive on Friday at 5 in the morning so I booked Thursday as well. Hopefully, I didn't do anything stupid. Had I requested an early check-in, the hotel would have made me pay an extra fee anyway, no?

This was a non-refundable room btw so the amount had already been credited to my account.

I would have asked how early I could check in first, perhaps, but having the room for the extra night is a perfectly good solution.

@ Loacker, I think that you did the right thing. You are arriving very early. I am not sure of your destination but if it takes you four hours to get to your hotel, you are asking to check in 5 hours ahead of the usual time. I would expect to have to pay for that and even if your room is empty, it is unlikely that the hotel would let you access the room at no cost that far in advance of regular check in time.

The only way to be sure of having a room Friday at 5 am is to book one for Thursday night. But do let them know you will be arriving at Fri at 5 am.

Even if they said they would try to give you early check-in there is no guarantee of this. If the hotel fills up the night before you would just be out of luck.

If you booked the night before you should note to the hotel that you will be arriving very very late (5am).

We always reserve an extra night if our travels have out-of-the-customary arrival/departure times, to guarantee that we get the type of room that we want. I will often communicate our arrival time with the hotel, as well, to be on the safe side. On occasion we have been charged only half of the room rate for the "extra" day/night, but this varies with each hotel.

Usual check-in time in Europe is 3pm.

Early check-in means that you may check in as early as 12am, whether you pay a fee for this or not, but certainly not at 5am.

A 5am check in means you have to book the previous night. So, you did the right thing (as said before). But send the hotel a notice about your check-in time to avoid any misunderstandings.

Usual checkin time in the US now seems to be about 3 pm, also.

Obviously, no room is going to be empty at 5 am as guests will not have left yet, and even if one has, it won't have been cleaned. So the only way you'd get a room is if by luck, the hotel had vacancies.

I've never had a hotel say oh, sure, you can have an early checkin just because I asked for one. They always say our checkin time is 3 pm, or whatever, if a room happens to be free, you may get it.

I would make it clear to the hotel that you are not arriving Thursday night but rather at 5am Friday morning; otherwise someone might think you are a no-show, or rather their computer might think that and cancel the reservation. That happened to a friend.

There is no such thing as a usual check-in time for Europe. Each hotel will publish their own check-in time.