What is the actual average length of time (in minutes) for hotel check-in and check-out?

It depends on the hotel and the amount of paperwork involved.

Assuming minimal interaction with the guest, no problems with room availability or the reservation at check-in, and no problems with a bill or guest complaint at check-out; I'd say that 2-3 minutes for a check-in, about half that much for a check-out, is doable.

This is what I could shoot for at a well-run Choice or Best Western property.

Originally appeared on Quora

What is the actual average length of time (in minutes) for hotel check-in and check-out?

It depends on the hotel and the amount of paperwork involved. 


 
Assuming minimal interaction with the guest, no problems with room availability or the reservation at check-in, and no problems with a bill or guest complaint at check-out; I'd say that 2-3 minutes for a check-in, about half that much for a check-out, is doable.
 
This is what I could shoot for at a well-run Choice or Best Western property.

Originally appeared on Quora

Why does it take so long to check in at hotels? (It seems like they should just need to swipe a credit card and maybe check your id, but the person behind the desk ends up hitting keys on the computer for 5-10 minutes sometimes. What are they doing?)

This is what the check-in screen on a typical hotel computer looks like. And on most of those, nearly all the fields are required . . .

And that's on a good system. At least it . . .

Arriving early to a hotel, I often hear "your room is not ready yet." Do hotels reserve you a particular room or do patrons simply have a spot in the hotel reserved for them?

We have a certain number of spots - rooms - reserved for a certain number of guests, and one of them is you.

As for the bad news, "your room is not ready yet" . . . Is it your own darn fault?  You'd be amazed at how frequently it could be!



We tell people (or we're supposed to tell them, although rushed desk clerks taking reservations, or reservations agents, frequently forget to mention it, or people don't read it on the webpage when making their reservation...), check in time is at 3:00.  

What time do people begin arriving?  That's right -- whenever they show up . . . wanting to be checked in to their room right away . . . 

But the housekeepers need that much time to clean the rooms from the night before.  (This is also the root of the flipside of the same problem - people overstaying checkout: Michael Forrest Jones' answer to How lenient are hotels when it comes to checking out late? )

Why do hotels have a check-in/check-out time? Could 24 hours (i.e anytime) check-in checkout be a differentiator?

If we have a room ready for you, we'll generally let you check in prior to three. Usually if we don't, it's not because we're being mean, it's because logistics can be a problem (Michael Forrest Jones' answer to Arriving early to a hotel, I often hear "your room is not ready yet." Do hotels reserve you a particular room or do patrons simply have a spot in the hotel reserved for them?)



Giving you a late check-out if you wish is frequently more tricky, but even that can be negotiated if you approach it in a considerate manner. (Michael Forrest Jones' answer to How lenient are hotels when it comes to checking out late? |Michael Forrest Jones' answer to How long after checkout time can I leave my hotel room without incurring fees or hassle? )  Here again, we're not trying to be difficult, but we have logistics issues around that. 

One of my first hotels after making the transition from hourly employee to management was a too-large hotel (Michael Forrest Jones' answer to What do hotels do with unused guest rooms?) in not an altogether great highway location, with not that many demand generators nearby -- but among the demand generators we did have was a couple of truck terminals. So I worked it out with one of those to allow the drivers to rent the room in 24-hour blocks: if the driver checked out after the housekeepers went home, we'd just 'roll' the room and let them clean it the next day. 

But we had the extra rooms and a vacancy problem, and no one else was going to rent them anyway, so we could afford to do that -- and we needed the business. It was a little extra recordkeeping for the clerks to stay on top of, but not that many hotels have an incentive to take that on. Most hotels, like it or not, have to stay in sync with the general human biological clock.

Originally appeared on Quora