For frequent travellers and those who stay out of hotels often quite long will know what a pain it is to arrive at the hotel early and wait in the lounge before the check-in time starts. If lucky, you might get a room early, but the chance of that happening is less.
To make bookings more flexible and allow customers to check-in early, depending on the travel itinerary, Oyo Rooms has introduced an early check-in feature that will allow you to check-in as early as 6AM in the morning.
Out of the 6,500 properties listed online, 2,000 will be offering this feature as of now and more will get added to this list. It is a great feature for those that want to utilize the full day and want to get done with the checking-in formalities in the morning itself.
“We received feedback from almost 50,000 users that the check-in time was an issue. Inter-city travellers typically arrive early in the morning or late-evening, and then they have to request the hotel staff to make the check-in flexible,” said Ritesh Agarwal, Founder & CEO at OYO.
While some hotels and guest houses might keep this feature complimentary, some properties will charge the users extra by an amount of Rs. 50 to Rs. 300 for reserving the room earlier than the allotted time.
How does Oyo plan to execute this?
Oyo Rooms claims that on an average, nearly 30% of the property is vacant. Since the properties that are already vacant can afford to offer a room to the customers, the feature will get directly built into its app and website, instead of the customer calling and requesting the same.
For the properties that do not have any vacancy will charge higher, sometimes even the rent of the room for one night, to make the reservation for the customer. This is because the standard check-out times have not been changed yet, and a room has to be booked so as to avoid the overlap.
Oyo Rooms is also contemplating modifying the check-out times, a little more flexible for the customers. Usually the time in between check-out and check-in is used to prepare the room for the next customers and this can be reduced by changing the check-out time.
The company also said that hotels and properties that offer this feature will be incentivized. It would be great to see an earlier check-in time after a long and tiring journey, when all you want to do is crash in the bed.
