I am a pretty frugal guy and am loathe to pay for … well… anything. Still, I recognize that not everyone is like me, so I thought I’d share a little bit about hotel day rooms, and talk about 3 times when hotel day rooms can make some sense
What are hotel day rooms?
The idea of a hotel day room is for people that need a hotel room during the day. Now, if you’re like me, you may have a preconceived notion about what a “hotel by the hour” is used for, and that is NOT what hotel day rooms are for (ya perv!) 😀
Hotel day rooms are rooms at hotels during the day (duh!). For hotels, hotel day rooms make sense because during the day, in the time between check out and check in there are often empty rooms, generating no revenue.
For consumers, there are usually 3 times when hotel day rooms can make sense
Business travelers with an early flight
For a business traveler flying in for say a 2pm meeting but arriving in town on the early flight (9 a.m.). Hotel day rooms can offer a chance to shower, get something to eat, relax and prepare. Unless you have airport lounge access, you may not be able to adequately prepare for an afternoon meeting
Staycation
Hotel day rooms can also make sense if you want to take a staycation at a fancy hotel. Rather than book a full night stay at a hotel, you might book a hotel day room, and take advantage of the hotel amenities during the day
Family trip to the city
Similarly, hotel day rooms can be an option for families wanting to travel into the city. I know that whenever we travel, we usually have a ton of kid and baby “stuff” along with us, and that gets bulky when you’re out seeing the sights. We’re dreading the day when my youngest gives up a stroller because it provides so much easy carry space!
When you’ve got a busy day ahead, it can make sense to have a central place to drop off your stuff, and potentially come back for an afternoon nap (for families that still have nappers), and a cheaper place to have lunch (especially if you have a hotel with a full kitchen).
How to find hotel day rooms
There are a couple of sites out there that offer hotel day rooms.
- HotelsByDay.com
- Between9And5.com
- DayUse-Hotels.com
- You can also check with hotels directly – many of the central hotels in larger cities offer hotel day rooms
How much do hotel day rooms cost?
Hotel day rooms are a little pricier than I would probably be willing to pay, in most cases. Here is an example from HotelsByDay.com for New York City, which seemed to have the best prices of the ones I checked.
It would be a great feature if some of these hotel day rooms were offered with POINTS!
As a bonus, Hotels By Day gave me a 10% off coupon for any hotel day rooms booked through their site: HBD10off – should get you 10% off. (I was not compensated by them or anyone for writing this post)
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Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at 
They also make great sense for long layovers. We have done that before on one of our trips to Europe with the whole family. 9 hour layover in Frankfurt so we grabbed a day room. Even though we had lounge access, it was good for the kids to lay down in a bed, take baths/showers, put something on the TV – just have room to move around. Hated paying the fee though. 🙂
I will like to take a nap during noon, or I can say it is a MUST. All three websites showed very limited choices as I searched for rooms near DC. Maybe it is just not a popular idea in the US.
Not Happy! Booked nearly one month in advance, revived “confirmation” email only to learn the day of my check-in that due to a fully booked hotel (Skyline Capital, 10 I St. SW, Washington, DC) that room not available and likely not available until 12 noon. Have used HBD before and great concept when and if it works…but learned on this trip that ‘confirmation’ isn’t really confirmation… ended up booking on site at same hotel through another service for a lesser rate…would think twice about using HBD in future.