Starwood last month formalized a program to offer Starwood Preferred Guest members rooms on a 24-hour basis, eliminating the traditional check-in and check-out times. The traditional model works for travelers who come into a city to do 8x5 business and those who turn in early, get up and hit the road - so who does that leave?
1. People who work from home, work from anywhere they are, or work non-traditional schedules - that's a rapidly growing segment of the population and a great source of mid-day F&B revenue.
2. Teams and other leisure travelers, who may not be playing in an event in the middle of the day. A block of rooms on a different check-in and check-out times can be easier than scattered singles.
3. Airline crew, who have been accommodated with irregular check-in and check-out times for many years. If your PMS is set up for that type of contract, starting there may make a 24-hour program easier to set up.
4. And many more who will start asking for a 24-hour room when they know it's available, even at a premium.
The biggest hurdle of course is Housekeeping, and there are two options - off-hours servicing of rooms, or leaving the room in a Dirty status until the next morning. Off-hours service means carts in the hallways at the same time as guests (consider carts that will fit through the door) and the traditional paper-on-clipboard room list breaks down.
You can solve the clipboard problem by making your PMS available on guest rooms floors. Franchises with proprietary, centralized PMS networks often secure the network and disallow any type of remote access - but if your PMS allows any type (truly, ANY type at all) of remote access, there are several ways to extend that access to a tablet in the guest room. With the new generation of tablets, you can put that in place for $200 each.
That means the housekeeper knows as soon as a room is available to clean, and the Front Desk knows as soon as a room is available to occupy. No radios, no phone checks, no delays.
If your occupancy is below 80%, making 10% of your rooms available on a 24-hour basis doesn't change your costs at all, and won't make a difference in your room nights or reports. If it's over 80% you will want to find a rate that doesn't decrease your revenue - so what do you charge?
Your Revenue Manager can start with a simple model: 2x RevPAR minus average housekeeping cost. No matter what the 24-hour period is, you're only going to clean the room once. That means the model above nets EXACTLY the same profit as a 2-night stay. Profit on the 24-hour room is then greater than two 1-night stays if you include the cost of the additional booking and credit card transaction.
There may be some other things to work out (like whether or not to do laundry off-hours), but if guests can get the equivalent of what would traditionally look like a day-and-a-half for a price close to rate-and-a-half, you may earn some very loyal business.
