TL;DR: A growing number of hotels offer hourly rates, day rates, and day rooms, all of which means letting guests book a room for a set time slot instead of a typical full night. These day-use stays are popular with travelers on long layovers, remote workers who need a private workspace, and anyone looking for a daycation. Guests can book directly with a hotel or through a day-use platform like Dayuse.com, HotelsByDay, or DayBreakHotels. For hoteliers, offering hourly and day-use rates is a straightforward way to generate revenue from rooms that would otherwise sit empty during the day, and a cloud PMS like Stayntouch makes it simple to manage both hourly and overnight reservations side by side.
Do Hotels Do Hourly Rates?
Yes! Hotels in nearly every category, from independent boutique properties to major chains, now offer hourly rates alongside their standard nightly rate. An hourly rate lets a guest book a room for a defined time slot, often a two- to six-hour window, rather than paying for a full overnight stay. The hotel sets its own hourly rate hotel room pricing, which typically is cheaper than the nightly rate since the guest isn’t staying overnight.
Hourly bookings started as a niche offering for airport hotels serving travelers stuck on long layovers, but the model has expanded well beyond that. Hotels now use hourly stays to fill rooms during traditionally slow daytime hours, turning otherwise empty inventory into an additional revenue stream without adding a single room to the property.
Do Hotels Do Day Rates and Day Rooms?
Yes, and it’s worth understanding how a day rate differs from an hourly rate.
- A day rate, sometimes called a day room or generic day use, is typically a flat price for access to a room for a block of daytime hours, commonly from mid-morning to late afternoon, with no overnight stay included.
- Hourly rates give hotels more granular control over pricing by the hour rather than a single flat day-use rate.
Day Use vs. Full Hourly Rates: Which is Right for Your Hotel?
Many hotels reserve day rooms for occasional day-use requests, while properties with steady daytime demand, like those near airports, business districts, or convention centers, tend to build out full hourly rate programs so they can adjust pricing based on time of day, day of week, or demand. Either approach lets a hotel monetize day hotels business without disrupting its regular overnight guests.
Stayntouch Cloud PMS offers three daytime and hourly operational configurations depending on a hotel’s business model:
- Generic Day Use: Designed for hotels that occasionally or regularly sell 0-night stays at flat rates alongside normal overnight stays.
- Hourly Reservations (Day Use): Enables dual operating diaries, Nightly Diary (N) and Daily Diary (D). This allows hotels to create, sell, and yield hourly rate blocks while continuing to sell nightly stays as their primary focus.
- Hourly Reservations (Full Hourly): Built for properties where hourly bookings are the primary revenue driver. The system defaults to the Daily Diary (D), managing reservations primarily by specific room numbers rather than overall room types.
How Do Hotels Rent Rooms for the Day?
Hotels rent rooms for the day through two main paths.
Many hotels list hourly rates and day rates on their own website through their internet booking engine, or a guest can call the property directly to ask about day-use rooms and hourly hotel bookings. Booking direct often means more flexibility on time slot and room type, since the hotel controls its own inventory and pricing.
Booking through a day-use platform is the most common path. Sites and apps such as Dayuse.com, HotelsByDay, and DayBreakHotels specialize in daytime booking and aggregate day-use inventory from thousands of hotel partners, from budget properties to luxury hotels. These platforms typically show the available time slot, the day rate or hourly rate, and hotel amenities up front, and many offer free cancellations. This route is popular with travelers who want to compare several hotels with hourly rates in one place rather than checking each hotel’s site individually.
Either way, a guest should confirm the exact check-in and check-out times, the total rate, and the cancellation policy before booking, since these details can vary by hotel and by platform.
How Can Hoteliers Use Hourly Rates to Capitalize Daytime Revenue?
For hoteliers, day use and hourly rates are often an underused revenue lever. A room that sits empty from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. is a room earning nothing during that window. Selling that same room for a few hours turns idle inventory into incremental revenue without any added cost of goods. Here are 5 ways to earn ancillary revenue off your rooms and amenities any hour of the day.
1. Use Hourly Rates to Offer a Respite for Travelers Enduring Extended Layovers
We initially developed the Hourly Use functionality for airport hotels, whose main source of revenue comes from selling hourly reservations to travelers facing flight delays or lengthy layovers.
Why should travelers wait for flights in a noisy and crowded airport terminal, when they can relax in a private hotel room, prepare for an important meeting, or catch up on a few hours of much-needed sleep? Stayntouch Cloud PMS gives airport hotels like the TWA Hotel at New York’s JFK Airport, the option of completely integrating hourly use with the full PMS. This allows hoteliers to apply different hourly rates to different times or days, immediately change rates at check-in, and utilize reporting on occupancy.
2. Utilize Day Use to Make Day Spa Reservations Without the Need for a Separate POS
Of course many hotels don’t need the complexity of Full Hourly reservations. Stayntouch’s Day Use functionality allows hotels to make separate day reservations for spa, golf, or other resort-like amenities without forcing your guests to book a nightly room 一 or forcing hotels to invest in a separate POS.
For example, one of our newer clients uses the Day Use function to offer half-day rentals for a 1000 sq. ft. spa suite, allowing them to cater to guests who want a quick, relaxing getaway, but don’t necessarily want to spend the night. Day reservations can also promote customer loyalty, since guests who already enjoy a hotel’s amenities are more likely to return for an overnight visit.
3. Promote Suites on an Hourly Basis to Make Socially Distant Dining Luxurious and Exclusive
Luxury hotels are now reserving their suites on a 2-3 hour basis so that guests can enjoy gourmet dining in a private and hygienic space. In this way, dining can become an exclusive special occasion, with multiple course meals, wine pairings, and even personal wait staff. In one high-end DC hotel, guests who are especially impressed with their experience can upgrade their meal to include an overnight stay at “competitive” rates, adding yet another source of revenue for the hotel.
4. Capitalize on the Co-Working Trend By Offering Hourly Rooms For Remote Workers
Hotels can provide everything from a quiet and productive space for individual workers who want a change of pace or workers traveling for business to meeting space for office-less businesses. And because hourly reservations are integrated with the full PMS, you can create a seamless remote-working experience, complete with automatic booking buffers for housekeeping, a range of targeted amenity and upgrade options for remote workers, and occupancy and summary reports for tracking statistics for day use/hourly bookings.
5. Offer Rooms or Extended Stay Suites as Personal “Escape” Spaces During the Day
But why stop at remote work? Many people living in densely populated metropolitan areas live in cramped apartments, making it difficult to work, relax, or entertain friends. By offering rooms or extended-stay suites during the day, hotels can cater to urban dwellers who need to get to work or get away. This “space-as-a-service” model offers guests a private area to work or relax,
with modern apartment features such as kitchen and dining areas, bedrooms, dedicated workstations and other office equipment, regular housekeeping, and complimentary coffee, refreshments and snacks
Frequently Asked Questions
Do hotels rent rooms for the day?
Yes. Guests can book a day-use room directly through a hotel’s website or front desk, or through a day-use platform such as Dayuse.com, HotelsByDay, or DayBreakHotels.
Is a day use hotel legit?
Yes. Day-use bookings are a standard and legitimate way for hotels to sell daytime room availability. Booking through the hotel’s own site or an established day-use platform is easy. Just be sure to check the cancellation policy before you book!
Is there a day use hotel app?
Yes. Apps like Dayuse.com, HotelsByDay, and DayBreakHotels let travelers search, compare, and book hourly or day-use rooms from their phone, often with free cancellation and no credit card required at booking.
What’s the difference between day use and hourly hotel bookings?
Day use typically refers to a flat-rate room booking for a block of daytime hours, while hourly bookings give a hotel more granular control to price and sell rooms by the specific hour. Many hotels start with generic day use and move to full hourly rates as demand grows.
See Hourly and Day-Use Rates in Action on Stayntouch
Day use and hourly bookings help hotels turn unused daytime inventory into new revenue without adding rooms, staff, or a separate system. Schedule a demo to see how Stayntouch Cloud PMS manages hourly rates, day-use rates, and nightly reservations from a single platform.
