Hotel Tries 24-Hour Checkout

<FONT SIZE="+3"><B>Hotel Tries 24-Hour Checkout</B>

By Linda Humphrey

<I>Beverly Hills, Calif. </I>- In experimenting with a 24-hour checkin and checkout policy, the Peninsula Beverly Hills recently became the first hotel to challenge an industry standard.

While many individual luxury hotels offer this service to their best guests when available, no hotel has risked offering such a formal guarantee.

At least one hotel organization, however, is closely watching the property's test, which addresses the needs of long-distance travelers, many of whom often find themselves stranded in hotel lobbies at sunrise or picking up room keys after midnight. Airline clubs have recognized this shift by adding showers. Car rentals last 24 hours, and yet hotel keys must be surrendered by noon.

"A day is 24 hours, except in the hotel industry," said Ali Cassock, general manager of the Peninsula Beverly Hills, which began the test three months ago. Guests who check in at midnight on Tuesday check out at midnight on Wednesday, and 6 a.m. arrivals find their rooms ready.

"We thought, if this is so simple, why hadn't anyone done it 100 years ago?" said Cassock, who thought of the idea while renting a car. "We thought maybe there was a trick in it, a hidden hurdle. But we discovered it only takes an internal commitment."

Typically, "luxury hotels are pretty strict about their checkin and checkout times," said Ted Mandigo, director of Landauer Associates in Chicago. Nonetheless, Preferred Hotels & Resorts is "looking at the policy very closely, because we think it can work," said Peter Cass, president and chief executive officer of the luxury hotel association, which includes the Peninsula among its 108 members. "At the high end of the market, what separates us from the Marriotts and Hyatts of the world is service. We try to accommodate early checkin and late checkout, but this policy takes it even further." Yet most hotels cannot guarantee such a policy, Cass admitted, especially when guests scheduled to check out opt to extend their stays.

The Leading Hotels of the World, which also features the Peninsula among its 300 members, is less enamored with the 24-hour concept. "The hotels would lose money on it," said sales manager Max Dobens. "In New York, hotels are sold out from mid- September through mid-December."

But in London-where 40 percent of the consortium's guests arrive from the States-the policy would be a big selling point, Dobens conceded. "When guests want to guarantee an 8 a.m. checkin, we usually recommend they book the room the night before," he said.

Ritz-Carlton spokeswoman Vivian Dueschl said such a policy would be difficult for a hotel chain to follow. "I would be very surprised if any chain adopted this policy," she said. "It's sort of setting you up for disappointing the guest. In key business-travel cities these days, there's so much demand for rooms that availability is impossible to predict. We always try to accommodate early checkin. But it's less likely that we would be able to stretch checkout until late at night."

For travel managers, the policy could save money and alleviate hassles. Europe-bound travelers would flock to a hotel with a 24-hour policy, said Jim Lennon, director of travel for New York-based Coopers & Lybrand. "You'd be amazed at the number of people who pay for the room the night before; it's either that or sleep in the lobby," he said. "And then half of them don't even show up until noon anyway, if their flight is late." Many early arrivals will shower at the airport and head directly for the office, Lennon added.

International travelers to the States would benefit from the policy as well, said Bob Brunner, manager of corporate travel for Philips Electronics Corp. in New York.

"My overseas travelers will come up to our offices in the morning for a meeting, and they invariably will leave their bags in their room and then call me at one or two in the afternoon and say, 'can I get a late checkout?' This drives me nuts as a travel manager," he said. "They don't understand that New York hotels are booked solid."

Still, the Peninsula, which draws 80 percent of its clientele from business travel, has managed to get past the availability glitch. "Nobody can tell me that their hotel runs 100 percent occupancy day after day," Cassock said. "Even if you have 80 percent year-round, you always have one or two rooms available at any given time."

Housekeeping, however, presents a challenge, as hotel cleaning staffs typically depart before dark. The Peninsula has scattered its housekeeping hours and even acquired quieter vacuums, Cassock said.

One Peninsula competitor has granted 24-hour stays as an "unwritten rule" for years. "The Peninsula just has a fancier title for it," said Lisa Hagen, director of business development for Beverly Hills' Sunset Marquis, which caters almost exclusively to the entertainment industry. Because almost half of the hotel's guests arrive from overseas, "we have certain floors where we don't begin vacuuming until after at least 10 in the morning," Hagen said. The hotel will not launch a formal policy, but will "continue as we always have," Hagen said. "Our clients are very familiar with what we offer them, and we're very loyal to our loyal customers."

While only a handful of luxury hotels seem likely to launch a formal policy, the 24-hour checkout could evolve into a negotiating point for travel managers. Many consortias already include late checkout in their contracts, noted Katie Galvin, eastern region sales manager for The Leading Hotels of the World. "If it's part of the menu, I think it's a great idea," said Lennon. "But people would abuse it if there wasn't a premium to be paid for it."

Yet if the Peninsula's policy works, "other luxury hotels will need to offer it," said Scott Brush, president of consultancy Brush & Co., Miami. "Peninsula clients are going to look for it in other markets. And the clients that hit the Peninsula are attractive clients to the hotel industry.